Doing Us Good 
And Plenty 




CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL 




diss //H^yfS 

Book 









Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



I 
I 



DOING US GOOD 
AND PLENTY 



BY 
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 

CO-OPERATIVE 



HD2T9S 

,RS3 



Copyright, 1914 
By Charles H- Kerr & Company 



JOHN F. H1GGINS 

PRINTER AND BINDER 
>80 

376-382 MONROE STREET 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



OCT !6 1914 

©GI.A380899 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Current Styles in Governmental Bunk 5 

II When Workingmen Seek to Better 

Their Condition 44 

III Civil War in Colorado 82 

IV A Startling Detonation in High Quar- 

ters About the Trusts 98 

V The Grand Old Sport of Trust Busting 117 

VI For Ourselves or For the Enemy . . 129 

VII The Un consumed Surplus and What It 

Means in the World 149 

VIII The Path to Peace 164 



DOING US GOOD AND 
PLENTY 

CHAPTER I 

CURRENT STYLES IN GOVERN- 
MENTAL BUNK 

Well, fellow Americans, tariff reform wasn't 
the thing, after all, was it? 

Do you remember how we were told year 
after year that the abominable tariff was the 
root of all our troubles? It was the tariff 
that increased the cost of living ; it was because 
of the tariff that we were getting relatively 
poorer all the time. Whenever we pointed out 
that provisions were constantly growing 
dearer, clothing cost more, and rents were 
higher, the answer from the wise men was al- ^ 
ways pat. Blame all this to the tariff, they 
said. It was behind the protecting wall of the 
tariff that all such evils grew. 

They made the thing look rather plausible, 
too. 

5 



6 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

There was an import duty on meat, for in- 
stance. Therefore, we could bring no meat 
from abroad, and the American packer having 
no competition, could charge us what he 
pleased. That was the reason why meat was 
dear. 

There was an import duty on wool; that 
was the reason why clothing was so dear. 

There was an import duty on sugar; that 
was the reason why sugar was high and all 
articles into which sugar entered cost us so 
much. 

There was an import duty on lumber; that 
made houses dear and rents high. 

On practically everything we consumed was 
an import duty, and thus we suffered from it. 
To make living cheap, therefore, behold the 
simple, certain prescription — Reduce the tar- 
iff and you reduce the price we must pay. 

Same way with the trusts. 

Those hideous monsters of our dreams, how 
quickly they would vanish when the fierce, man- 
eating tariff should be driven from our midst! 
<; The tariff is the origin of the trusts," sang 
from ocean to ocean a large, if indiscriminate, 
chorus. Some persons thought the trust ques- 
tion was complex and difficult to handle. 
Gifted thinkers that were editing Democratic 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL, BUNK 7 

newspapers knew better. The simple way to 
abolish the trusts was to abolish or reduce the 
tariff that nourished the trusts. 

For instance, if beef were admitted free of 
duty, that would dispose of the Beef Trust, 
because then we could buy our meat from abroad 
and be independent and happy. 

If sugar were admitted free the Sugar Trust 
would not last twenty-four hours. Put lum- 
ber on the free list and watch the Lumber 
Trust melt away, and rents come down with a 
rush. Reduce the tariff on steel and the Steel 
Trust would cease to bother and the Wire 
Trust be at rest. 

And it seemed well that we should do some- 
thing of the kind, for even to the dullest and 
fattest witted observer the situation was be- 
coming alarming; if not for himself, being 
full of beef and mutton, at least to his country. 
You see the cost of living had been increasing 
rather rapidly for many years, and as wages 
had increased comparatively little, and in some 
instances not at all, this did seem to make a 
tough situation for the workingman. Even a 
fat millionaire Senator could see that — if it 
were brought to his attention often enough. 
It wasn't serious for him, of course, but it might 
be serious for somebody else. 



8 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

As to the fact itself, that was not a matter 
of assertion; it was a matter of statistics as 
well as of common knowledge among the mil- 
lions and millions affected by it. Of course old 
Senator Sorghum does not know anything about 
it from personal experience, because an increase 
in the cost of his living is offset by the natural 
increase in his revenue from the investments 
that are fattened upon other folks. But he 
can very easily ascertain all about it if he will 
turn to the official and other reports. Thus, 
for instance, what are called " index numbers," 
a device for registering average prices on the 
markets, show that in twelve years the average 
cost of living has increased 50 per cent., and 
in seventeen years it has increased nearly 80 per 
cent., but in the same period of seventeen years 
the average of wages and salaries has increased 
no more than 20 per cent. 

In other words, here is demonstration for the 
well-fed Senators of a fact that to all the work- 
ers needs no other demonstration than their 
experience. The worker in America is con- 
stantly growing poorer. Every year he must 
pay more for practically everything he buys, 
and whatever good luck he may have had in 
securing an increase of wages the prices have 
soared faster than his income. Every worker 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 9 

knows this. It is only set down here to explain 
what happened to the mind of Senator Sorghum 
when the fact was driven in upon him. 

Not only is the cost of living increasing more 
rapidly than any increase in wages, but every 
time wages are forced up, whether by strikes, 
threats, appeals, the work of the unions or what 
else, the fact is made an excuse for jacking up 
the cost of living another notch, so that the in- 
crease in the good man's wage really reacts to 
his disadvantage. 

Thus, when in 1910 the anthracite coal 
miners succeeded in extracting from the Coal 
Trust a slight increase in their wages, the Trust 
immediately used the fact as an excuse to ad- 
vance the price of coal 25 cents a ton, and 
thereby increased its income $15,000,000 a 
year ; whereas the increase of wages it had 
granted to the miners cost the Trust only 
$6,440,000 a year — thus adding $8,560,000 
net to its yearly gouge. But the increase of 
25 cents a ton went into the production cost 
and the transportation cost of 90 per cent, of 
the things the miners bought; with the result 
that they were no better off than they were be- 
fore. 

But the Trust had $8,560,000 more to di- 
vide. 



10 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

All these facts were undeniable and not pleas- 
ant to contemplate, even to the gentlemen of 
the professional and well-to-do classes, to whom 
exclusively (for some reason never disclosed) 
we entrust our government. 

It was all well enough to have a working 
class perpetually on a lower social plane, but if 
that working class was every year being worse 
fed and worse housed, and was getting con- 
stantly poorer, those among our legislators 
that were able to think at all conceived that the 
outlook was not wholly reassuring. 

Suppose the working class, for example, un- 
der such conditions, should get tired of being 
forever fooled into supporting Lawyer Sor- 
ghum and Politician Mazuma; suppose the 
worker should quit voting for his employers, 
as represented in the Republican and Demo- 
cratic parties, and begin to vote for himself. 
You see the possibilities were not nice. Of 
course the worker never had revolted nor shown 
signs of insubordination in his politics, but there 
was no telling what might happen in such an 
extraordinary situation. Where the cost of 
living was always increasing, and there was no 
corresponding increase in wages, was every pos- 
sibility of trouble. Every year it was harder 
for the workingman's wife to make her hus- 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 11 

band's income buy the food for the household 
and clothe the children; every year she must 
scrimp more and practice more self-denial; and 
every year the chances for the children grew 
worse. 

For all this again some of the well-fed con- 
tingent told us the simple remedy was to re- 
duce the tariff. If we could import the arti- 
cles now monopolized by the innumerable trusts 
the trusts would dry up and blow away, all com- 
modities would necessarily be cheapened, and, 
of course, down would come the cost of living. 

Workingmen were told this throughout the 
campaign of 1912, and seemed to believe what 
they were told, for the country elected a Demo- 
cratic President and a Congress Democratic in 
both houses, and this Democratic administra- 
tion promptly applied the simple remedy that 
had been doped out by the wise men. Congress 
passed the law reducing the tariff on most 
things and abolishing it on those important arti- 
cles that were supposed to control the high cost 
of living. 

Bread was put on the free list ; so were crack- 
ers. 

Meat was put on the free list. 

Milk and eggs, potatoes, cattle and hogs, 
fruits and lard were put on the free list. 



12 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

Wool was put on the free list. 

Corn and cornmeal were put on the free list ; 
so were bacon and hams. 

Lumber was put on the free list. 

Wheat and flour were put practically on the 
free list. 

Coal was put on the free list to reduce man- 
ufacturing cost and household expenses ; so was 
kerosene. 

Iron ore, pig iron, hides, leather, boots and 
shoes, cotton, steel ingots, billets and slabs were 
put on the free list. 

The duty on sugar was greatly reduced for 
the time being, to be abolished a little later. 

Salt was put on the free list ; so were fresh 
water fish. 

As you will see, a whole bill of fare, and then 
some. 

This great and wonderful reform has now 
been in operation about one year. 

The result is that the cost of living has not 
been reduced; the trusts have not been busted, 
but only benefited; the situation of labor has 
not been improved. 

Exactly as before, the workers continue to 
grow poorer. The cost of living continues to 
increase upon them. There is no correspond- 
ing increase in their wages. The winter of 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL, BUNK 13 

1913-14 was the worst that the working class 
has seen in the country for many years ; more 
men were out of work; there was in all parts 
of the country a more acute distress. Chicago, 
St. Louis, San Francisco, and many other cities 
saw demonstrations by the unemployed the like 
of which had never before been witnessed in 
American communities. In New York the 
charitable societies estimated that there were 
350,000 men without employment, and it was 
admitted that the resources of the city govern- 
ment and of private charity were utterly un- 
able to cope with the situation. Many of the 
unions were caring for unusual numbers of 
the destitute among their members. In more 
than one city the well-to-do were appalled 
at the plain manifestations of distress and dis- 
content among what are called in snobbish 
speech " the unfortunate." 

So it is apparent, brethren, that Tariff Re- 
form isn't the thing; they were not giving to 
us the correct dope when they handed that out. 
We have had the blessed old tariff reformed and 
reduced and amputated and tinkered with in 
every way those experts could suggest, and the 
trouble keeps on exactly as before. 

Still the cost of living increases, and there 
is no corresponding increase in wages and sal- 



14 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

aries. Still, therefore, the whole working class 
is getting poorer and the prospect for the chil- 
dren of that class gets darker. 

But the tariff tinkers were not the only 
Old Docs that undertook to find a cure for these 
augmenting troubles. A great many declared 
that at bottom the whole thing was a question 
of getting more out of the land. We were not 
producing enough. 

Thus, if we produced more wheat the price 
would fall, and that would bring down the price 
of bread, and when bread fell of course other 
things would fall, too, and there you are with 
a full solution. Back to the farm — that was 
the grand idea. Let everybody go to farming. 
Only a small part of the total surface of the 
land was cultivated. Immense areas in addi- 
tion were susceptible of cultivation. Let all 
those now suffering from poverty in our cities 
go west and turn farmer. This would relieve 
the congestion in the labor market and at the 
same time reduce the cost of living by increas- 
ing enormously the supplies of food. How the 
people of the cities were to get possession of 
farms was not explained, nor how if they got the 
land they would find farming profitable when 
the prices of all farm products were to be cut 
in half or so. But trifles like these were not al- 





STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 15 

lowed to stand in the way of the only true and 
infallible remedy for all the ills of the nation. 
Hence, back to the land! Let everybody turn 
farmer! Shoes, probably, would grow on trees, 
and trousers on bushes. Anyway, back to the 
land! 

Well, it seems we have been going back to the 
land, and we have been increasing our farm 
products, and yet nobody can detect any change 
in the general situation, except that it grows 
worse. 

I have here the figures before me. In 1913 
there were more farms than ever, and they pro- 
duced more food. The value of the farm prod- 
ucts raised in the United States in that year 
was more than six billion dollars, and exceeded 
any crop records in our history. We raised 
about twice as much in 1913 as we raised in 
1899, and a billion dollars' worth more than 
we raised in 1909. It was the bumper crop of 
America, 

The number of farms had increased 11 per 
cent, since 1910. The total number in 1913 
was 6,600,000. 

So we have been going back to the land, and 
we have been applying this far-famed remedy, 
and these are the results. I do not need to 
preach any pessimistic view of the outcome. 



16 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

An official bulletin of the Agricultural Depart- 
ment tells the story and supplies the comment. 
First, the facts. The bulletin says : 

Corn, with a value of $1,692,000,000, comprised 
28 per cent, of the value of all crops, although the 
volume was under the record. The other princi- 
pal crops with values are given in the order in 
which they come: Cotton, $798,000,000; hay, 
$797,000,000; wheat — the largest crop ever 
raised in this country — $610,000,000; oats, $440,- 
000,000; potatoes, $228,000,000; tobacco, $122,- 
000,000; barley, $96,000,000; sweet potatoes, 
$43,000,000; sugar beets, $34,000,000; Louisiana 
cane sugar, $26,000,000; rye, $26,000,000; rice, 
$22,000,000; flaxseed, $21,000,000; hops $15,000,- 
000; buckwheat, $10,000,000. 

In quantity of estimated production the record 
has been broken by wheat, rye, rice, sugar beets, 
beet sugar, and the total of beet and cane sugar. 
Of the remaining crops, oats, barley, cotton and 
hops have been exceeded twice in production. 

The value of the crops of 1913 is high. A new 
high record in estimated value is made by the total 
of all cereals, and separately by corn, cotton, cot- 
tonseed, tobacco, and sugar beets. Only once has 
there been a higher estimated value of oats, rye, 
rice, potatoes, hay, hops, and the total of beet and 
cane sugar. Only twice has the estimated value 
of wheat and of beet sugar been exceeded. 

Dairy products of 1913 are estimated at more 
than $814,000,000; eggs and fowls have an esti- 
mated value of more than $578,000,000. 

The wool production of 1913 was estimated at 
304,000,000 pounds. 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 17 

The prices of fourteen principal crops average 
about 20.2 per cent, higher than a year ago and 
4.6 per cent, higher than two years ago. Their 
total values average about 3.8 per cent, higher than 
a year ago and 7-6 per cent, higher than two years 
ago. 

The value of the agricultural exports of domes- 
tic production in the fiscal year 1913 was $1,123,- 
021,469, an amount which has not before been 
equaled. The reexports, otherwise called the ex- 
ports of foreign agricultural products, are esti- 
mated at $12,000,000. The so-called balance of 
trade in agricultural products is in favor of the 
exports of domestic farm products by $296,000,- 
000. 

The cotton crop now seems to be established in 
value as next in order after corn. The lint of this 
crop in 1913, at the price of December 1, had an 
estimated value of $798,000,000, and this was not 
equaled in any former year. It is 14% per cent, 
above the average of the preceding five years. 
The estimated number of bales of 500 pounds gross 
weight in this crop is 13,677,000; consequently, this 
crop has been exceeded in quantity by the crops 
of 1911 and 1912. If the estimated value of the 
cotton seed is added to that of lint> the total farm 
value of this crop amounts to $945,000,000, an 
increase of 16 per cent, over the average of the 
previous five years. 

That seems to make the back to the farm 
argument look pretty sick. But listen to what 
the department says : 

However desirable increased production on farms 
may appear to be from the consumer's standpoint, 



18 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

it does not follow that such increased production 
would result in any increase in the cash income per 
farm or per capita of farm population, or that 
prices paid by consumers would be any lower. 

Had the total production in 1913 equaled or ex- 
ceeded the 1912 production, it seems probable that 
the cash income per farm would not have been 
greater, and might have been less than in 1912; 
but it is extremely doubtful whether the cost to 
the consumer would have been any less, because 
retail prices are promptly raised on a prospect of 
underproduction, but are very slow to decline if 
there is overproduction. 

So it seems there is little hope here; the 
prices of food continue to increase, but the 
farmer gets nothing of the increase. 

Something deeper and far more radical than 
this seems to be our ailment. 

Not long ago Congressman H. W. Summers 
of Texas, who represents a cotton growing con- 
stituency, made a sensation in the House of 
Representatives by a speech on the condition 
of the Southern farmer. He said: 

It is said that the man who makes two blades 
of grass grow where one grew is a public bene- 
factor, but we are offering mighty poor encourage- 
ment for the two-blade production if the two blades 
bring less money than the one would have brought. 

In 1910 Southern farmers produced 12,000,000 
bales of cotton. The world said that was not 
enough. The next year they produced 16,000,000 
bales. It cost them millions of dollars more. 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL, BUNK 19 

The world's appreciation was shown by penaliz- 
ing them $125,000,000. The corn crop of 1912 
was considerably larger than that of the preced- 
ing year, yet it brought $50,000,000 less. 

Plainly, then, the farmer is not getting the 
profit from the increased cost of living. 

To a worker no demonstration is needed that 
the working class is not getting it; he knows 
that well enough from his own daily experience. 
For the benefit of others it may be well to refer 
again to the statistics. The census of 1910 
showed that the average income of a workingman 
that was the head of a family was a trifle oVer 
$500 a year. Investigations of the Agricultural 
Department showed a year or two ago that to 
support an average family in anything like de- 
cency anywhere in the United States at least 
$900 a year would be required. The New York 
Association for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor recently went into this subject scientific- 
ally, and its tests showed that the conclusions 
of the Agricultural Department were too op- 
timistic. The Association took twenty-seven 
tenement house families that it was caring for, 
and, after deliberate investigation, adduced the 
following table as giving the least a family 
could subsist upon in New York city, any- 
way: 



20 DOING US GOOD AND PI^ENTY 

Rent and light $ .65 

Food 1.298 

Clothing 433 

Fuel 045 

Lunches L 089 

Dues 068 

Medicine 079 

Ice 05 

Carfare 065 

Household supplies 091 

Miscellaneous 097 

Total daily budget $2,965 

Total yearly budget $1,082.00 

If we take the Agricultural Department's fig- 
ures as indicating the best that can be done in 
small communities, which is probably the case, 
and the tables of the Association for Improving 
the Condition of the Poor as showing the condi- 
tions in larger cities, we must be appalled at the 
next fact we are called upon to contemplate, 
which is that an analysis of the income tax 
facts of 1913 showed that 96 per cent, of the 
people of the United States that have any in- 
come at all, whether from wages, salaries or in- 
vestments, have an average annual income of 
$601. 

It is very common among well-fed persons 
that think superficially, or not at all, to push 
aside any such terrible facts as these by saying 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 21 

that anyway the worker can better his condition 
if he wishes to do so. All he needs to do is to 
practice thrift, economy, zeal and other virtues, 
and be diligent in the performance of his duties. 
If he is faithful and intelligent he is sure to 
rise, and meantime let him deny himself and put 
money in the savings bank and get rich and in- 
dependent. 

Having delivered himself of which, this kind 
of a philosopher usually lights a fresh cigar and 
delivers an impressive lecture on the improvi- 
dence of the working classes. The thing has 
become so common that we even have now a 
National Thrift Society for the purpose of 
teaching workingmen and their wives how to 
make two dishes of one soup bone and to 
turn papa's trousers a third time for little 
Willie. 

It is easy enough for a man with an income 
of $25,000 a year to preach thrift. If he were 
one of the many millions of workers whose aver- 
age annual income is $500 with a $900 family 
to support his eloquence on this subject would 
drop a little. How are you to practice econ- 
omy when every cent you can earn or hope to 
earn is swept away the moment it touches your 
hand by pressing needs and imperative de- 
mands? The Thrift Society has not told us 



22 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

this. I wish it would in the next beautifully 
printed bulletin. 

But about this matter of improving your 
condition and rising in the world and all that. 

It is customarily put forth with a wealth of 
instances to make the grand old truth apparent 
to every workingman. James J. Hill began 
iife as a farmer's boy, Charles M. Hays was an 
obscure clerk in a railroad office, Thomas F. 
Ryan's first job was to sweep out a store at $3 
a week, Charles M. Schwab used to be a work- 
man in an iron mill, Andrew Carnegie landed 
on these shores all but penniless. See? These 
are the opportunities offered in this country to 
men that are zealous and industrious. Be zeal- 
ous ; that's the thing. Regard your employer's 
interest as your own. Serve him faithfully and 
get your wages increased. Then you will not 
have to complain about hard times and the in- 
creased cost of living. 

Yes. Well, there is about one foreman, over- 
seer, superintendent or other salaried officer 
to every 333 workers, so that even at the best 
the gaudy prospect offered by this prescription 
is that maybe one person in 333 can rise and 
the rest must remain exactly as they are, no 
matter how hard they may strive, no matter 
how diligent, industrious, zealous and service- 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL, BUNK 23 

able they may be. They can wear out their 
hearts and lives in the effort to improve their 
condition, and have nothing to show for it but 
their pains. 

This is on the theory that all officers of all 
corporations and industries are taken from the 
ranks, and that such officers have the same aver- 
age length of life that workers have. 

But, as a matter of fact, the situation is much 
worse than I have shown, because most officers 
are not taken from the ranks, and the average 
length of life among them is much greater than 
among toilers. 

Prof. Scott Nearing, in his valuable book, 
" Financing the Wage Earner's Family," has 
some interesting facts that illuminate this sub- 
ject. He takes the railroad worker as a typi- 
cal case, which is good, since it is the officer of 
the railroad that is most frequently held up to 
the admiring throng as an example of " get- 
ting on in the world." 

It appears that ostensibly and on the face of 
the returns a railroad trainman has one chance 
in three hundred of becoming some kind of an 
officer on his line, but he has every year a far 
greater chance of being killed in the perform- 
ance of his duty for his kind and generous em- 
ployer. Every year he has one chance in 



24 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

twenty of being injured and one chance in one 
hundred of being killed. If he shall work as 
long as twenty years while he seeks by diligence 
and zeal to better his condition, the chances are 
even that in that period he will be injured, and 
one to six that he will be killed, so that the 
chance of being injured is three hundred times 
as great and of being killed is fifty times as 
great as his chance of becoming a general offi- 
cer in the company. 

From this and other illustrations Prof. Near- 
ing deduces that the tendency of modern indus- 
try is toward a form of organization that will 
require the wage-worker to remain a wage- 
worker, and without the least hope of being any- 
thing else. 

Prof. Nearing also seems to find that when 
a worker reaches thirty years of age the slender, 
elusive chances he may have had, one in three 
hundred or four hundred of securing a better 
position, are practically exhausted, and from 
that time on he can look for nothing better, but 
only things worse. At thirty he has reached 
the maximum of his earning power. But there 
is no limit to the minimum, for wages are always 
subject to contingencies of sickness, accidents, 
suspensions in the industry, over-production, 
new inventions and the like. 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL, BUNK 25 

So while the cost of living increases upon this 
working class and there is no corresponding in- 
crease in its wages, it is confronted with an 
iron-bound condition that offers no possible es- 
cape from a state steadily growing worse. This 
is not the deduction of an agitator ; it is the con- 
clusion of the highest authority in the United 
States on work and wages. 

No, it is perfectly obvious that the working 
man is not getting any of the profit that is 
reaped from the increased cost of living. Nor 
is the working woman. Mr. Abram I. Elkus, 
of the recent New York State Commission to 
investigate factory conditions, made a search- 
ing inquiry about two great industries that 
employed together 10,893 women, and found 
that hundreds of these women received a com- 
pensation of $3 a week or less, while other hun- 
dreds received less than $8 each. On this he 
said: 

" Some remedy is needed for such conditions. 
You know and I know that women can't live and 
keep body and soul together on such a wage as 
this. We have got to give the employes a living 
wage/' 

Miss Mary Dreier, another investigator, said 
that the object of the state was to discover if 
there were any industries that were paying 



26 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

wages upon which employees could not live, and 
the Commission had ascertained that there were 
thousands of girls earning from $3.50 to $7 
a week. 

" We know they can't live properly on that," 
said Miss Dreier, " and still they go along doing 
the best they can. We also know big able- 
bodied men earning not more than $7 or $9 a 
week. They have families to support, and we 
know it can't be done." 

Miss Dreier said that in one store she investi- 
gated the rule was that the chairs for sales girls 
which were required by law were not to be used, 
and that the girls were afraid to tell about it. 

"Why is that?" she asked. 

A girl in the crowd called back, " Blacklist." 

So it appears that not only do these women 
work for less than enough to live on, but they 
are denied the right of speaking about the con- 
ditions under which they work, even when those 
conditions violate the law. Some one with an 
expert mind sh'ould point out the difference be- 
tween such a situation and the slavery that ex- 
isted in the South before the Civil War. 

Still, the great toll is collected, and more of 
it every year, for still the perilous condition 
is maintained under which the cost of living 
is increasing, and there is no corresponding in- 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL, BUNK 27 

crease in wages and salaries. Where, then, does 
the tribute go? The farmer does not get it, 
but complains all the time of diminished returns 
for his hard work, complains so bitterly that he 
is now organizing or trying to organize a huge 
marketing system of his own that will save him 
a part of the money now taken from him. The 
worker does not get it, because he grows always 
poorer, and slides downward to lower standards 
of living and bleaker prospects for himself and 
his children. Where does it go? 

Fortunately, as to that also we have some 
official documents of great interest and value, 
so that no one need be driven to speculation or 
mere guess work, nor yet to individual asser- 
tions. It is all in the records. 

When the Interstate Commerce Commission 
was investigating the financial wreck of the New 
Haven Railroad it found that in eight years 
the capitalization of that road was increased 
1500 per cent, and that a very large part of 
the increase was not represented by improve- 
ments of any kind, but was merely the graft or 
" benefits " pulled off for the insiders that had 
control of the property. Nevertheless the in- 
creased capitalization was a burden on the road 
the operations of which must be taxed to pay 
the resulting dividends and interest charges. 



28 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

That meant that the charges must be passed 
along for the public to pay, and that meant 
that all of them must in the end come out of the 
toiler. 

About $125,000,000 of such "benefits" in 
the shape of these issues of interest-bearing se- 
curities were traced to the fortunate insiders, 
and suits were subsequently begun to try to re- 
cover these amounts. But in any case the se- 
curities remain a charge upon the property that 
the public must pay and in the end this charge 
must fall upon the back of the producer. 

One of these operations may serve as a sam- 
ple of all. There was a piece of trolley road, 
more or less junk, that bore the resounding name 
of the New York, Westchester & Boston. Its 
stock, we now learn, on high authority, was 
worth "10 cents a pound," but its purchase 
would afford a good opportunity to issue more 
securities for the benefit of the gentlemen on the 
inside, and others, and also to make further 
deals. So this junk railroad was hitched up 
with other " properties," some real and some 
imaginary, having a total outside worth for 
everything of not more than $4,722,348, and 
for the lot a price of $11,550,000 was fixed up 
and paid through Morgan & Co. to Oakleigh 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 29 

Thorne, a very prominent banker of New York. 
The examiners of the Interstate Commerce 
Commission subsequently found that the fol- 
lowing was the distribution made of the money 
involved in this extraordinary purchase: 

To C. H. Smith for " surrendering a 

contract " .$1,050,000.00 

To J. P. McDonald, for negotiating 

the same 375,000. 

To Thorne and Perry in commissions 784,560. 
To Thorne and Perry for surrender- 
ing their contract 275,000. 

Unaccounted for because of burning 

of Thome's books 1,032,000. 

For Portchester stock (face value 

$156,000) . . . 970,000. 

To W. C. Gotschall for "maps and 

plans " 116,000. 

To lawyers for " legal fees " 260,000. 

To N. Y. R. R. and Development 

Company for stock 750,000. 

For New York City and Contract 

Company, property . 4,722,347.15 

Underwriting, brokers' commissions 

and miscellaneous not specifically 

accounted for 816,093.15 

In turning over the accounts of these transacr 
tions the examiners found entries of enormous 
sums paid to lawyers of prominence, including 
a justice of the Supreme Court and his firm, a 
Congressman ($65,900), two justices of the 
Supreme Court of New York and others. 



30 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

Afterward President Mellen of the New 
Haven on the witness stand before the Com- 
mission was asked about this transaction and 
recalled that it was necessary to amend the 
franchise of one of the companies involved be- 
fore the deal could go through, and he said that 
to get this change made it was necessary to deal 
liberally with the city politicians. The late 
Thomas Byrnes, formerly Superintendent of 
New York's police, Mellen said, acted as inter- 
mediary in the transaction of acquiring 24,000 
shares of a certain stock, " held by persons of 
influence." Mr. Mellen said: 

" When Byrnes came to me, he was all ready 
to turn over the stock. But I considered the fran- 
chises of the Westchester Company defective in 
many particulars. I told him there could be noth- 
ing doing until the franchises were amended. I 
gave him a list of the amendments I wanted and 
also insisted that certain litigation be cleared up. 
All of my demands were promptly met." 

Mellen said that the New York City officials 
— he thought the Board of Estimate or the Board 
of Aldermen — amended the franchises. He 
could not tell how the deal was put through or 
whether Police Inspector Byrnes did business di- 
rect with the politicians. 

" I didn't want to know/' he said. " All I was 
after was results for the New Haven road, and I 
would have done business with the devil himself 
had it been necesary." 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 31 

And again: 

" I am satisfied this stock was originally issued 
to contractors and they placed it where it would 
do the most good/' 

;i You mean they used it to bribe politicians ? ,f 
" Well, I mean they used it to get influence. 
Of course, I don't know all about it. We found 
the shares of the road scattered. One big block 
was in Byrnes' hands. We had to have it, and I 
did business with Byrnes. " 

" What was the Westchester stock worth ? " 
■' I would say about 10 cents a pound." 
M Yet you exchanged good New Haven stock or 
money for it ? " 
" I did/' 

So here is where go some of the profits from 
the increased cost of living. The farmers do 
not get it and the workers do not get it, but 
the parasites are taking it in, hand over fist. 
And if the job were done when they get the 
money, there would be some limit to the essen- 
tial graft. But the fact is that in nearly every 
case these transactions represent or culminate 
in the issuing of securities that constitute for- 
ever afterward a tax upon the operation of the 
railroad, to be paid by the public and passed 
along to the toiler. 

Yet this New Haven railroad, thus revealed 
as a producer of wealth for the insiders, is no- 
torious for the low scale of wages it pays to 



S2 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

its employees and in the last few years has 
borne an unenviable reputation for the number 
of its accidents. 

But the New Haven is only one small ex- 
ample of where It Goes To. The cases of the 
'Frisco, the Rock Island, the Cincinnati, Hamil- 
ton & Dayton and other roads offer illustrations 
just as gross. While the trainmen with equal 
chances of being injured and one chance in six 
of being killed are creating this wealth for very 
little pay, the gentlemen on the inside are raking 
it off for themselves in always increasing vol- 
ume. Where they are not concealing behind 
huge stock issues and crooked deals, they are 
taking staggering dividends. Look for in- 
stance at this table of the recent dividends paid 
by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Rail- 
road, as given by Poor's Manual, the standard 
authority in railroad finance: 

1902 7 per cent. 

1903 7 per cent. 

1904 17 per cent. 

1905 20 per cent. 

1906 20 per cent. 

1907 20 per cent. 

1908 20 per cent. 

1909 85 per cent. 

1910 20 per cent. 

1911 55 per cent. 

1912 20 per cent. 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 33 

In addition to millions of dollars distributed 
in the shape of stock dividends. 

So it is pretty plain here where It Goes To. 
The farmer doesn't Get It and the worker 
doesn't Get It, but the case is very different 
when you turn to the records of the fortunate 
gentlemen on the inside of these industries. 

Those that have not told us that tariff 
tinkering would cure all our ills, and those that 
have not expatiated to us on the beauties of 
thrift and " getting on in the world," have been 
kind enough to say that Government Regula- 
tion of our troubles would make us all happy 
and cause papa's wages to go twice as far as 
they can go now. 

These would seem to be persons of a degree 
of hopefulness only to be described as superhu- 
man. 

For twenty-five years we have been trying 
by regulation to achieve some beneficial change 
in the situation, and the net result of all the 
nation's effort in these directions has been ri- 
diculous failure. The simple fact that in these 
twenty-five years the situation for the working 
class has not improved but only grown steadily 
worse, is in itself enough to condemn all these ef- 
forts at parlor and lady-like reform, for in *I1 
this time the cost of living has not ceased to 



341 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

mount upon the workers, nor has there been at 
any time a corresponding increase in wages. 
But the truth is that while the workers consti- 
tute the great majority of the population no- 
body has considered them in all this legislation, 
nor, as I shall show a little later, has it been 
possible for the workers to secure the slightest 
real attention to their desires, even when what 
they want is a matter of plain and simple jus- 
tice and of the utmost importance to the wel- 
fare of the nation. 

But to come back to the failure of regulation, 
and to look at it merely from the point of view 
of the classes it was intended to benefit, take 
railroad regulation, for instance. We began 
that in 1886, and for the last twelve years every 
Congress has regularly testified to the failure 
of the railroad laws by passing a new set de- 
signed to correct the weakness of the laws in 
existence, and each new law has been found on 
trial to be as flabby and inefficient as the old. 

A very good example of this kind of legis- 
lative tom-foolery may be found in the long 
drawn out efforts to stop the species of rail- 
road swindling that consists in the giving of re- 
bates to favored shippers. Every one of our 
railroad regulative measures has aimed to stop 
rebating and on its passage each of these laws 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL, BUNK 35 

has been hailed as at last the sure and effective 
remedy. The Elkins law of 1903 was certain 
to stop rebates, the Roosevelt law of 1906 
made them utterly impossible and the Taft law 
of 1910 abolished the last chance that any rail- 
road, however dishonest, could ever slip by with 
a rebate to anybody. The result being that to- 
day there is probably in bulk as much rebating 
as there ever was, the only change being that it 
is more cleverly concealed and that whereas in 
former days small shippers had some chance at 
these favors, to-day they are confined ex- 
clusively to the big establishments, which 
thereby secure still another advantage over 
smaller competitors. 

Many good souls but easily deceived will 
probably be shocked at my statement that there 
is in bulk as much rebating as ever and some 
may think it merely an extravagance. I pur- 
pose in this article to make no assertion without 
the authority therefor, and in this instance the 
deduction I have drawn is based upon an au- 
thority no less than the Interstate Commerce 
Commission. In a decision handed down Jan- 
uary 27, 1914, the Commission unreservedly 
denounced the practice of rebating as wide- 
spread, unlawful and operating to the disad- 
Tantage of smaller manufacturing concerns 



36 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

throughout the United States. These rebates, 
the Commission found, were often disguised as 
elimination of demurrage on " industrial lines " 
owned by the manufacturing plants and claim- 
ing to be common carriers, the admission of such 
industrial lines to the benefits of the so-called 
" per diem arrangements," and in other in- 
genious ways ; but they were none the less re- 
bates and unlawful. The decision then pro- 
ceeded to give an astounding list of the rebates 
it had discovered, and of course where it suc- 
ceeded in digging up one instance there are 
probably one hundred that it did not unearth. 
Some of the largest railroad companies and 
most important manufacturing enterprises in 
the country, conducted by eminent gentlemen 
whose devotion to law and order is vociferous 
whenever there is a strike, were proved by the 
Commission to be habitual violators of the stat- 
utes against rebating. 

Thus the National Tube Company, one of 
the subsidiaries of the United States Steel Cor- 
poration, the decision says, " has forced the line 
carriers to concede divisions to it out of their 
rates, which during 1911 are shown to have 
been $425,000. This exceeded the entire op- 
erating expense of the plant railway for that 
year." 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 3Y 

A long list of industrial companies, among 
them the Republic, Pittsburgh, Bethlehem, and 
Cambria steel companies; the Youngstown 
Sheet and Tube Company, and the Wheeling 
Steel and Iron Company, are named as hav- 
ing received such preferences and discrimina- 
tions. 

The Commission found that during the fiscal 
year 1912 the Pennsylvania Railroad had paid 
$1,019,910, the New York Central $660,057, 
and the Baltimore and Ohio $530,317 in allow- 
ances to industrial railways. Five industrial 
lines received more than $1,000,000 in per diem 
reclaims. 

" In many cases,' 5 says this memorable de- 
cision, " the cash revenues received by these 
plant railways out of the rates of the line car- 
riers are sufficient to lift from the industries the 
entire cost of their operation." It says that 
in many instances the plant railway also is able 
" to declare large dividends on its stock held 
by the industry." The Baltimore and Spar- 
rows Point Railroad Company, the plant rail- 
road of the Maryland Steel Company, paid 
annual dividends on such stock during the last 
eleven years that " aggregated more than 423 
per cent., and have ranged from 20 to 55 per 
cent, a year." 



38 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

Fifteen million dollars a year, according to 
this decision, is a conservative estimate of the 
rebates thus concealed — years after all these 
laws have made all forms of rebating abso- 
lutely illegal and prohibited them under heavy 
penalties. And all these investigations of the 
Commission, it must be borne in mind, take no 
account of the enormous rebates that are con- 
cealed in other ways. 

The decision further points out that allow- 
ances paid to and free services performed for 
large industrial plants relieve them of a heavy 
expense they would otherwise have to bear as 
part of their manufacturing costs ; on the Penn- 
sylvania lines east of Pittsburgh alone there are 
233 such plants where the railroad performs 
services free. 

Such allowances, the decision says, " are an 
example of the special concessions and rebates 
in service that shippers with a large traffic are 
able to wring from the carriers in considera- 
tion of being permitted to handle the traffic or 
share with other lines in its carriage." 

Or to take another handy and ever present 
illustration, observe the prodigious efforts of 
the government to deal with the mighty trust 
problem and what a hash it has admittedly 
made of the job. 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 39 

Twenty-four years have passed since the 
blessed Sherman anti-trust law was passed and 
cackling reformers said we had come to the end 
of our trust troubles. To-day there are easily 
ten times as many trusts in the United States 
as when the law was passed and they are a hun- 
dred times more powerful and arrogant. The 
law so far as these powerful combinations of 
capital are concerned, has been merely a joke, 
or worse. 

Whenever a trust has been prosecuted under 
this law, even when a trust has been ordered 
by the Supreme Court of the United States to 
be " dissolved " it has merely advanced to 
greater profits and greater power. Three years 
after the Standard Oil trust had been " dis- 
solved " under the Sherman act, the value of its 
securities had exactly doubled and its pros- 
perity was the greatest in its history. The 
American Tobacco Company seems to have re- 
ceived similar advantages from its " dissolu- 
tion " by the same august body. Proceedings 
have been pending for years against the United 
States Steel Corporation and other great 
trusts, but even when these have been investi- 
gated and specifically denounced by committees 
of Congress the cases against them have never 
gotten anywhere. There is a punishment of 



40 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

penal servitude provided by this law, but not a 
trust magnate has ever gone to prison under 
it. In spite of the fact that the supplies of 
every great necessity of life in this country are 
now controlled by a trust. 

Very different, it will be recalled, has been 
the experiences of labor unions and labor leaders 
under the same law. It was never designed by 
the men that drew it, to be applied to labor 
unions. It has been enforced against them vig- 
orously on more than one occasion. It was de- 
signed against combinations of capital and 
against such combinations it has been a dead 
letter. 

Men are now under sentence of imprisonment 
in New Jersey for agitating against one of these 
trusts at a time of a strike ; the gentlemen that 
conduct the trust have never at any time been 
in danger of jail for violating the anti-trust 
law. 

To show now what has been the situation of 
the working class in all these reforming activi- 
ties I cite a piece of history that ought to be 
familiar to all citizens of the United States and 
still is but little known. 

In 1907 the Supreme Court handed down its 
famous decision in the Danbury Hatters case, 
the essence of which was that a labor union 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 41 

could be held financially liable for damages to 
business resulting from a strike. 

Ever since the unions have been trying to 
have the Sherman law amended so that it will 
no longer be possible for courts to read into 
it a construction that was never intended by 
the f ramers of the act ; in other words to amend 
the law so as to exclude in so many words all 
labor unions and farmers' associations. 

For years Congress contemptuously refused 
to so much as listen to the plea of the unions 
for this elemental justice. I remember that in 
1908 the House Committee on Labor refused 
to give Mr. Gompers so much as one minute in 
which to state his case. At last the unions suc- 
ceeded in compelling the Democratic party to 
pledge itself in its national platform to make 
the desired change in the law. When the Dem- 
ocrats obtained control of the government the 
unions asked for the fulfillment of that pledge. 
President Wilson prepared a new anti-trust law, 
being another experiment in feeble reform, and 
the unions desired to have an amendment added 
that would save labor from persecution under 
the Sherman law. They drew up one that 
would have had such a result. The Democratic 
leaders cried out against it as too drastic and 
revolutionary ; the President, also, was unalter- 



42 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

ably opposed to it. A contest was precipi- 
tated, ending in a long conference and a com- 
promise. The result was that an amendment 
was adopted pretending to exclude the unions, 
but in reality doing no such thing, while under 
cover an adroit provision was slipped over to 
make injunctions in labor cases easier and more 
oppressive than ever. 

This has been the universal history of labor 
in all these legislative experiments. While the 
working class has all these years been the over- 
whelming majority of the population, and while 
every bad condition that was complained of bore 
far more, heavily upon the workers than upon 
any other class, the workers have never been 
considered for a moment until their complaints 
and grievances became in the single instance of 
the Sherman law too threatening to be longer 
ignored. 

Whereupon they were recognized — to the 
extent of being outrageously fooled, defrauded 
and humbugged. 

It is evident, therefore, that there is no more 
hope of relief in regulation than there was found 
to be in tariff tinkering. All of these things 
are mere devices to distract the working class 
from its wrongs and their real remedy. 

There has been no relief to the worker and 



STYLES IN GOVERNMENTAL BUNK 43 

there will be none so long as he remains unrep- 
resented in the affairs of his nation. 

Two-thirds of the voters of the United States 
belong to the working class ; nine-tenths of the 
members of Congress belong exclusively to the 
parasite class. That is where the trouble 
comes in. If the working class does not wish 
to be represented it need not be; but in that 
position it stands alone among all the working 
classes of the world. Everywhere else the truth 
is being recognized that it is utterly impossible 
for the workers to have justice from a govern- 
ment conducted by and for the exploiters. 
Consequently, elsewhere the working class is 
moving on toward what belongs to it. We need 
not join that procession unless we wish; but if 
we resolutely refuse to use the means we have 
in our hands to secure justice we ought not to 
complain if the government and the courts 
seem organized against us and meantime the 
cost of living continues to increase but there is 
no corresponding increase in wages and salaries. 



CHAPTER II 

WHEN WORKINGMEN SEEK TO BET- 
TER THEIR CONDITION 

The American newspaper press is the most 
enterprising in the world. 

In the reporting of wars it has no equal. Its 
lavish expenditures and dazzling achievements 
in obtaining all the news of the slightest ma- 
neuvers in any war have become historic. 

In the Spanish- American War the American 
press spent millions of dollars to describe for its 
readers every event, no matter how trivial. 
When war breaks out between Japan and Rus- 
sia or between Italy and Turkey or between 
Bulgaria and Greece, the American press has 
its own correspondents on the battlefields and 
follows the movements of each army. 

In regard to all such matters the American 
public is remarkably well-informed. It knows 
all about battles in Albania and massacres in 
Mexico almost as soon as these have happened. 

But it is an astounding fact that whereas this 

public would know all about a war in Europe 

44 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 45 

or Mexico, wars exist and are prosecuted in our 
own country and this same public knows noth- 
ing or next to nothing about them. 

I mean not theoretical or paper wars but 
actual, bloody warfare, with sieges, battles, 
marchings and countermarchings. 

I mean that an event can happen in Bosnia 
and be fully reported in our press, and the same 
event can happen in a remote part of the United 
States and the vast majority of the American 
people never hear of it. 

It is the same about law and order. While 
comfortable, well-to-do people sit at ease, serene 
in the belief that all is well with the nation and 
even talking confidently of the reign of peace 
and the Constitution, elsewhere civil war may 
be raging, all law and all constituted authority 
may be abolished, battles may be fought and 
deeds of almost unparalleled atrocity be done, 
and yet these complacent souls be in total ig- 
norance of all these terrifying convulsions. 

Three times in the last two years exactly this 
has happened. Three regions successively have 
been torn with war as undisguised as the war in 
the Balkans and still more ferocious and cruel. 
Yet comparatively few persons have known of 
these facts, the peace societies have never said 
a word about them, the Carnegie organization 



46 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

has never protested, the pulpit has never com- 
plained, the editorial writers have never ob- 
jected. 

An enlightened public opinion is supposed to 
be the basis of our government and the safe- 
guard of the citizen's rights. 

How can we have an enlightened public opin- 
ion when the public is not allowed to know what 
is going on in this country ? 

Suppose we have a condition in which a large 
part of the community is deprived of all the 
protection of the Constitution and of the laws 
and of the courts of justice, and still the public 
at large has no knowledge of this usurpation 
and can have none. What would you expect 
to happen under such circumstances? 

Suppose that in a New England town of 
1,000 inhabitants all the merchants, profes- 
sional men, bankers and editors were seized by 
armed and unauthorized bands, thrust into jail 
without warrant, guns held at their heads, their 
families dispossessed, their right to a trial and 
a writ of habeas corpus denied, every protec- 
tion abolished, and yet the press of the country 
were to be silenced about such things and the 
courts to refuse to interfere, what do you think 
would be the attitude of American citizens sub- 
jected to such treatment? 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 47 

And yet it is the simple truth that exactly 
such things can happen and do happen, not to 
merchants and professional men but to working- 
men that have incurred the ill-will of powerful 
interests. Such things can happen and do hap- 
pen and either the press will not report them 
at all or it will give of them distorted and per- 
verted accounts creating the impression that the 
victims of these outrages were themselves the 
law-breakers. 

No doubt, to any American that has not been 
familiar with the actual conditions in his coun- 
try these remarks will seem extravagant and 
unfounded. It is natural that we should take 
for granted the supremacy of law and order, 
particularly when daily we hear it asserted and 
have no reason to question it. I will, therefore, 
cite three instances from the records, and with 
them illuminate the situation of labor as it 
really is in America under the secret rule of 
accumulated wealth, the greatest power in the 
world. 

In the latter part of 1912 the coal miners of 
the Paint and Cabin Creek regions in West Vir- 
ginia went on strike against the impositions 
that they asserted were practiced upon them by 
their employers. 

The mining companies were rich and very 



48 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

powerful; they belonged to one of the two 
groups of capitalists that exercise irresistible 
influence over government. 

The companies filled the region with armed 
guards, being gunmen and gangsters imported 
chiefly from the East Side of New York and 
known to be utterly reckless of human life. 
These attempted to overawe the strikers and 
break the strike. Battles were fought between 
the gunmen and the miners, and the entire 
region was for weeks in a state of utter chaos. 
When it was apparent that the gunmen were 
ineffective in bringing the strike to an end, the 
coal companies induced the governor to call out 
the militia. The officers of the militia pro- 
claimed martial law, abolished the constitutions 
of the state and of the United States, arrested 
men without warrant, condemned them at farci- 
cal sessions of a drumhead court martial, and 
locked them up in the penitentiary on long 
sentences on trivial accusations. Among them 
were men seized outside the region where mar- 
tial law had been declared and charged with 
offenses over which no court martial could pos- 
sibly have any jurisdiction. 

All these facts were subsequently established 
by an investigation of a committee of the 
United States Senate. Yet of these most ex- 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 49 

traordinary events, of the war that went on, 
the bloody and revolting scenes, the trip, for 
example, of an armored car loaded with a Gat- 
ling gun and rifle marksmen, that shot up a 
sleeping village, the public at large remained 
in ignorance. If Huerta had manned an ar- 
mored car somewhere in Mexico and had de- 
scended upon unarmed women and children, 
shooting and murdering, all the land would have 
known it and a cry of horror would have gone 
up. 

It appears to be perfectly true that these 
things can happen in the United States and 
nobody know of them but the perpetrators and 
the survivors. 

We should note, too, that in each of these 
three instances the circumstances were the 
same. 

That is to say, workingmen had gone on a 
strike against unjust conditions and petty ex- 
tortions practiced by their employers. The 
employers were members of one or the other 
of the two great, powerful Groups of capitalists 
that together control more than one-third of 
the total wealth of the United States. These 
two Groups also own or control or can muzzle 
most of the newspapers and news gathering 
agencies of the country. 



SO DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

That seems to be the reason why civil war 
can rage in the United States, armored trains 
can shoot up sleeping villages, battles can be 
fought and the Constitution abolished and the 
mass of the public know nothing about such 
alarming facts. 

To say this is easy enough. Very likely you 
have heard before this the assertion that the 
press is kept and the working class can expect 
from it nothing but misrepresentation and per- 
version of facts in the interest of the employers. 
If you are unfamiliar with the truth of the 
matter you may have thought these statements 
exaggerated. I will now put before you the 
record that you may see how little of exaggera- 
tion there is in what I have said and how little 
chance for justice the workers have when they 
venture into a contest with the tremendous and 
wide-spread power that is now exercised by 
these Groups. 

Some of the richest copper deposits in the 
world are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, 
most of them purporting to be owned or con- 
trolled by a great corporation called the Calu- 
met and Hecla. This is a mining company that 
is also the holding concern for seventeen other 
mining companies, owns a railroad or two, some 
smelting works, some other profit-making de- 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 51 

vices and an organized system of politics the 
equal of any. 

It is one of the richest and most profitable 
enterprises in the world. Except for a few 
railroads like those of Mr. Hill, the Calumet 
and Hecla has made more money on a smaller 
investment than any other corporation that ever 
existed. In the sixteen years ending with 1912 
the smallest annual dividend has been 80 per 
cent., and in other years it has been as much 
as 400 per cent. Here is the record: 

ANNUAL DIVIDENDS PAID ON CALUMET AND HECLA 
STOCK 

Year. Per cent. Year. Per cent. 

1897 160 1905 200 

1898 200 1906 280 

1899 400 1908 80 

1900 280 1909 108 

1901 180 1910 116 

1902 .100 1911 96 

1903 140 1912 168 

1904 160 

As these dividends were declared upon a capi- 
tal stock less than half of which was ever paid 
for, a nominal dividend of 400 per cent, was an 
actual dividend of 800 per cent. 

On every dollar ever invested in this company 
more than one hundred dollars have been paid 
in dividends, while millions of dollars of other 



52 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

profits have been diverted to the purchase of 
additional profit-making ventures. With a par 
value of $25, on which only $12 was paid in, 
the shares have now a value of $540 each. 

Besides the staggering dividends the follow- 
ing annual salaries are paid to the fortunate 
gentlemen that chiefly possess this unexampled 
private mint : 

Quincy A. Shaw, president $100,000 

Rodolphe L. Agassiz, vice-president .... 50,000 

James MacNaughton, 2d vice-president . 25,000 

James MacNaughton, general manager . 40,000 

James MacNaughton, director 20,000 

Quincy A. Shaw, director . . 20,000 

Francis Lee Higginson, director 20,000 

Walter Hunnewell, director 20,000 

Rodolphe L. Agassiz, director 20,000 

George A. Flagg, sec'y and treasurer . 20,000 

E. B. Leavitt, consulting engineer 25,000 

W. C. Smith, ass't sec'y and treasurer . . 10,000 

Mr. Shaw therefore receives $120,000 a year 
in salaries, Mr. Agassiz $70,000, and Mr. Mac- 
Naughton $85,000 — from the Calumet and 
Hecla. The officers and directors of Calumet 
and Hecla are usually officers and directors in 
the seventeen subsidiary companies of which 
Calumet and Hecla is the holding concern. 
What emoluments are attached to these posi- 
tions are not generally known, but Mr. Mac- 
Naughton is said to derive $35,000 a year from 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 58 

such sources, bringing his salary to $120,000 
— or $55,000 a year more than the president 
of the United States receives. Before a com- 
mittee of the United States House of Repre- 
sentatives Mr. MacNaughton refused to answer 
any questions as to the amount of his salary, 
curtly informing the examiner that it was none 
of the examiner's business. It can only be be- 
lieved, therefore, that the amounts set down 
here, which have never been challenged, are cor- 
rect. 

The Calumet and Hecla barony comprises 
117 square miles. There is every reason to 
believe that it occupies and has occupied this 
land without rightful title, and all the vast 
wealth it has taken therefrom really belongs to 
the people of the United States. 

There is also good reason to believe that it 
has consistently violated its charter and is now 
engaged in doing so every day and every hour 
of every day: a fact that will not in the least 
astonish you when you come to learn of some of 
its other activities, but that adds a rarely 
piquant taste to the pious exclamations of its 
attorneys on the subject of law-breaking. 

The direct ownership of the Calumet and 
Hecla is a kind of family heirloom, residing 
chiefly in the Higginson and Agassiz families 



5& DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

(who are intermarried), the Shaws and the 
Hunnewells, all being in the very front rank of 
Boston's social and financial leadership. But 
a still more interesting fact is the way this 
ownership is hooked up with the most colossal 
Interests in the country and Those that Con- 
trol. As thus : 

According to the report of the Pujo Com- 
mittee, the greatest financial Power in the 
United States is a group of financiers compris- 
ing in New York the Morgan House and its 
allies ; in Boston the firm of Lee, Higginson & 
Co., the National Shawmut Bank, the Old Col- 
ony Trust Company and its allies ; and in Chi- 
cago the Continental and Commercial Bank and 
its allies. The testimony of one expert shows 
that this group already owns and controls 
more than thirty-seven billion dollars of the 
total national wealth of one hundred and twelve 
billions, and whoever wishes to see the astound- 
ing ramifications of its Power has but to turn 
to No. 3 among the illuminating charts pre- 
pared by the committee. 

Interlocking directorates and other connec- 
tions weld Calumet and Hecla to this gigantic 
force. 

Through the Higginsons it is hitched to Lee, 
Higginson & Co., the Boston & Lowell Railroad 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 55 

(New Haven-Morgan), Merchants' National 
Bank, and others. 

Through Walter Hunnewell to the Old Col- 
ony Trust Company, the Webster and Atlas 
National Bank, the Massachusetts Electric 
Companies, and others. 

Through Rodolphe L. Agassiz to the State 
Street Trust, American Trust, United Zinc and 
Chemical and New England Exploration Com- 
panies, Walter Baker & Co., and others. 

Through Mr. Shaw with various manufac- 
turing, mining and financial interests. 

Through Lee, Higginson & Co. the wire runs 
to the General Electric, United States Steel, 
the Traction Trust, the Pennsylvania, South- 
ern and many other powerful railroads and to 
the house of J. P. Morgan & Co., center of all 
these vast enterprises and of the Interests that 
Control. 

These Interests long ago declared war on the 
Labor Union. 

In most of the great industries they control, 
United States Steel, International Harvester, 
Pullman Company, and many others, the unions 
have been driven out by bitter warfare. In 
others, like the Colorado Fuel & Iron, the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad and the like, incessant at- 
tacks are made on labor organizations. By 



56 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

this power in the last two years the unions have 
been crushed in the shops of the Union and 
Southern Pacific and the Illinois Central. The 
elder Morgan himself gave the keynote to the 
long, ruthless, relentless campaign, and his as- 
sociates in the Group have one and all been 
imbued with the feeling of the feud. 

Now kindly note: 

In the Copper Barony of the Upper Penin- 
sula copper is everything; there are almost no 
other products. The whole region lives upon 
copper and Calumet and Hecla absolutely domi- 
nates the copper business. Well, what would 
you expect? The copper companies became in 
time the supreme authority. They owned or 
controlled the press and the politicians, domi- 
nated the parties and filled every public office 
with men of their choosing. They ruled all the 
banks, and the banks, in turn, with unquestioned 
sway, ruled the tradesmen. They controlled 
the churches and spoke through priests and 
preachers. They controlled the legal profes- 
sion because they held all the avenues to pro- 
fessional success or political distinction. Geo- 
graphically the region was in the United 
States; otherwise it was an independent sa- 
trapy. Whatever the copper companies wanted, 
that was the real law of the district. Upon 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 57 

the affairs of all Michigan the Copper hand 
was laid. Constitutions of the nation and the 
state were but nominal things in the Copper 
Country, which, remote, isolated and unob- 
served, was governed by the companies much as 
Napoleon governed Elba. 

The miners whose toil produced the enormous 
dividends, fat salaries and colossal Power of 
the Calumet and Hecla were ill-paid and ill- 
treated, often badly housed in the company's 
dwellings, subjected to long hours and danger- 
ous conditions of labor. For years they had 
been unorganized. In 1911 they joined the 
Western Federation of Labor, and on July 23, 
1913, after vainly attempting to induce the 
companies to consider their grievances, they 
struck for better working conditions. 

The men behind the Controlling Interests 
hated all labor unions, but most they hated the 
Western Federation of Miners. Old, bitter 
conflicts in Colorado and elsewhere, stained with 
blood and a civil war, burned still in their minds. 
They had tried to crush the Federation and had 
failed. Any kind of a labor organization was 
repugnant because it would threaten the peace- 
ful autocracy of the Barony, but of all organ- 
izations the Western Federation was the worst* 

This is the heart of the whole trouble at 



58 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

Calumet. The mine managers have since ad- 
mitted that they would have granted, in whole 
or in part, other demands of their employees, 
but they were determined not to tolerate the 
union. 

Here was a pitched battle between Organized 
Labor and the Controlling Interests. 

Great strikes are decided by public opinion; 
public opinion is determined by press dis- 
patches ; public opinion is always against strik- 
ers that are believed to be disorderly, violent 
and lawless. 

The surest way for employers to win a strike 
is to cause public opinion to believe that strikers 
are disorderly, violent and lawless. 

Most of the accounts of any strike outside 
your own city are conveyed to you through an 
institution called the Associated Press. 

About 900 daily newspapers in the United 
States, comprising the great majority of the 
journals of influence and circulation, receive 
and print the news dispatches of the Associated 
Press. 

This means that concerning any event of im- 
portance an identical dispatch is printed about 
15,000,000 times and may be read by 30,000,- 
000 persons. 

According to the construction and wording 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 59 

of that dispatch so will be the impression these 
30,000,000 persons will receive and the opinion 
they will form and pass along to others. 

Here is the most tremendous engine for 
Power that ever existed in this world. If you 
can conceive all the Power ever wielded by the 
great autocrats of history, by the Alexanders, 
Csesars, Tamburlaines, Kubla Khans and Napo- 
leons, to be massed together into one vast unit 
of Power, even this would be less than the 
Power now wielded by the Associated Press. 

Because thought is the ultimate force in the 
world, and here you have an engine that causes 
30,000,000 minds to have the same thought at 
the same moment, and nothing on earth can 
equal the force thus generated. 

Well-informed men know that the great Con- 
trolling Interests have secured most of the other 
sources and engines of Power. They own or 
control most of the newspapers, most of the 
magazines, most of the pulpits, all of the poli- 
ticians and most of the public men. 

We are asked to believe that they do not own 
or control the Associated Press, by far the most 
desirable and potent of these engines. We are 
asked to believe that the character and wording 
of the dispatches upon which depends so much 
public opinion is never influenced in behalf of 



60 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

the Controlling Interests. We are asked to 
believe that Interests that have absorbed all 
other such agencies for their benefit have over- 
looked this, the most useful and valuable of all. 
We are even asked to believe that, although the 
Associated Press is a mutual concern, owned 
by the newspapers, and although these, news- 
papers that own it are in turn owned by the 
Controlling Interests, the Controlling Interests 
do not own, control or influence the Associated 
Press, which goes its immaculate way, furnish- 
ing impartial and unbiased news to the partial 
and biased journals that own it. 

That is to say that when you buy a house 
you do not buy its foundations. 

You may like to bear these matters in mind 
as you peruse the following dispatches of the 
Associated Press concerning the strike at Calu- 
met and compare them with the facts developed 
by investigation and in most cases substantiated 
by a mass of affidavits. 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.* THE FACTS. 

Calumet, Mich., July 24. There had been no vio- 
— Disregarding orders of lence and no disturbance 
the Western Federation of that in any degree justi- 
Miners against violence, fied the calling out of 
many of the 15,000 strik- troops. At this time the 
ing miners of the copper strike was barely twenty- 
belt to-day created enough four hours old, and there 
disturbances to result in had been no attempt to 

* As printed in the Washington Post. 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 61 

the ordering out of troops. operate any mine; conse- 
By to-morrow night there quently nothing had hap- 
will be nearly 2,400 state pened of the nature that 
soldiers, including cavalry usually provokes violence 
and artillery, in the min- at strikes. As a matter 
ing district of the Upper of fact, before the strike 
Peninsula. began the militia had been 

arranged for and was 
called out for the pur- 
poses of the copper com- 
panies. 

This is the first great strike in years to 
which soldiers have been called on the first day 
and before any need had been shown for their 
presence. The fact that they were so quickly 
mobilized in this instance is conclusive evidence 
that their coming was pre-arranged; it is even 
said that special trains for their conveyance 
were made ready by the railroad companies be- 
fore the men had left the mines. 

No evidence existed that the sheriff was un- 
able to control the situation with the means 
ordinarily at his command. A vast number of 
independent witnesses have sworn that the mi- 
ners were perfectly quiet. Most of the strikers 
were Finns, who are known to be among the 
most peaceable and orderly of all peoples. 
Yet within twenty-four hours the region was 
overrun with soldiers and great guns had been 
planted commanding villages as placid as any 
in a valley of New England. The indecent 
haste of the governor thus caused the miners 



62 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

to believe that the state was in league with and 
the tool of the copper companies. But the 
hews that the troops had been summoned, as 
conveyed in the dispatch quoted above, im- 
pressed the whole country with the idea at the 
very outset of the story that violence was rife 
and the miners were dangerous characters. 

When the mine managers contemptuously re- 
fused to make any answer to the miners' com- 
plaints they knew well enough that they were 
insuring a strike and began to prepare for it. 
They arranged in advance for detachments of 
so-called armed guards supplied by so-called 
detective agencies, the guards being in fact 
chiefly gunmen and gangsters from the slums 
of great cities. About 1,200 of these were 
brought to the district and in utter defiance of 
the law of the state were sworn in as deputy 
sheriffs. From recruits in the neighborhood 
about 400 were added. All were armed with 
rifles, revolvers and clubs. 

There were now in the district 4,000 heavily 
armed men, supplied with artillery, to watch 
13,000 men that had no weapons. 

Many of the armed guards have since sworn 
that when it was found that the strikers were 
absolutely peaceable and quiet instructions 
were given to the guards to " start something." 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 



63 



They were told to break up processions, to keep 
strikers from using the highways and to shoot 
any person that spoke to them; all this with 
the manifest purpose of provoking disorder. 
Many times they were assured that they were 
expected to use the rifles that had been given 
to them, and if any trouble followed from such 
use the sheriff would protect them. 



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. 

Calumet, Mich., July 
29. — No organized disor- 
der took place to-day, but 
there were several com- 
plaints from non-union 
men that threats had been 
made against them, and at 
least two members of the 
local militia company 
were warned that reprisals 
would follow a continu- 
ance of their military ac- 
tivities. One received an 
anonymous letter, and the 
widowed mother of the 
other was called upon by 
several men, who told 
her that she might ex- 
pect trouble for her son 
unless he deserted his com- 
pany. 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.f 

Calumet, Mich., Aug. 
14. — One striking copper 
miner was killed and two 
deputy sheriffs were 
wounded to-night in the 



THE FACTS. 

This despatch bears its 
own comment. The affi- 
davits show that far worse 
threats were made to men 
to induce them to go back 
to work, but the Associ- 
ated Press never reported 
any of these. 



THE AFFIDAVITS. 

These three despatches 
refer to the same incident, 
although the casual reader 
would never suspect this 
identity. 



* As printed in the Washington Post. 

t As printed in the Chicago Record-Herald. 



64 



DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 



first fatal outbreak of the 
strike. 

The fight took place at 
Seeberville, and the miner 
was killed while resisting 
arrest. When the depu- 
ties went to Seeberville to 
get two strikers who had 
forced the line of guards 
at the Champion mine of 
the Copper Range Consoli- 
dated Company, strikers 
gathered and attacked the 
officers with revolvers and 
bottles. 

Calumet, Mich., 
August 15, 1913. 
To the Associated Press, 
Chicago, III* 

Following last night's 
clash between strikers and 
deputies at the Champion 
mine, in which one striker 
was shot dead, three others 
seriously injured and one 
deputy hurt, the guards 
about all the mining prop- 
erties in the copper miners' 
strike zone have been 
drawn tighter. Although 
the strikers have increased 
the number of their pick- 
ets, no trouble has oc- 
curred in any other part of 
the district as a result of 
the Champion mine fight. 

Calumet, Mich., 
August 15, 1913. 

To the Associated Press, 
Chicago, III* 
The death list as the re- 
sult of the battle between 



At Seeberville, a mining 
village adjoining the rail- 
road station of Painesville, 
John Putrich kept a board- 
ing house, in which dwelt 
sixteen miners. Seeberville 
is on a main traveled road 
that makes a long detour 
from the railroad station. 
Many years ago the peo- 
ple of Seeberville made a 
path about 300 feet long 
by the side of the railroad 
track from the station to 
the main road, and thus 
cut off about one-half mile 
of the road's detour. They 
universally used this path 
to and from the station. 

On August 14 two of the 
boarders at Putrich's house 
went to a neighboring town 
to visit friends, and re- 
turned by railroad train, 
alighting at the Painesdale 
station at about 5:30 p. m. 
They started to walk down 
the path they had always 
used. An armed guard 
yelled at them to keep off 
that path. They had al- 
ways used it, and knew no 
reason why they should not 
continue to do so, and 
therefore they pursued 
their way to Putrich's 
house. While they waited 
for supper they were en- 
gaged in playing in Put- 
rich's yard at the side of 
the house a game resembl- 
ing tenpins. Of a sudden 
they heard men calling to 
them, and looked up to find 



* Despatches from the Associated Press correspondent. 



WHEN WOKKINGMEN PROTEST 



65 



strikers and deputy sher- 
iffs at the Champion mine 
at Painesdale last night 
was increased to two by 
the death at noon to-day of 
Stephen Putrich, who was 
shot through the abdomen. 
Three independent inves- 
tigations of the shooting 
were established this morn- 
ing by Judge Murphy, rep- 
resenting Governor Ferris, 
Prosecuting Attorney Lu- 
cas and Sheriff Cruse. 



on the other side of the 
fence seven armed men 
with revolvers drawn. 

The terrified boarders 
fled into the house. The 
weather was warm and the 
doors and windows were 
open. Without explanation 
and without summons the 
seven armed men sur- 
rounded the house, and be- 
gan to fire into the open 
doors and windows, killing 
one man instantly, fatally 
wounding another and se- 
verely wounding two oth- 
ers. 



How valuable were the " three independent 
investigations " may be gathered from the fact 
that on January 7, 1914, Sheriff Cruse admit- 
ted that four of the men that had committed 
these murders were still on guard as " deputy 
sheriffs," carrying the weapons and the au- 
thority of the state of Michigan. But later, 
when general attention had been called to this 
sinister fact, the men were tried and sentenced 
to prison terms for this deed, though the Asso- 
ciated Press had reported that " the miner was 
killed while resisting arrest." 



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. 

Calumet, Mich., Sept. 
1. — The copper strike 
situation took a serious as- 
pect to-day as a result of 
the fatal shooting of Mar- 

* From the Washington Post. 



THE FACTS. 

Her name was Margaret 
Fazekes. She was not the 
daughter of a striker, and 
had no connection with the 
strike. There was no clash 



66 



DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 



garet Fazakas, aged 15, 
daughter of a striker at 
the North Kearsarge mine, 
when a picket of strikers 
and women clashed with 
deputy sheriffs guarding a 



with any picket. A Labor 
Day procession was being 
held at Kearsarge. It had 
nothing to do with the 
strike. A band of armed 
guards without excuse or 
occasion attacked the pro- 
cession and broke it up, fir- 
ing about 100 shots. This 
girl was not in the pro- 
cession. She was walking 
along the sidewalk, and a 
bullet from a gunman's 
revolver pierced her skull. 

THE AFFIDAVITS. 

The strikers were accus- 
tomed to march in little 
processions from one vil- 
lage to another for the 
purpose of visiting and en- 
couraging their striking 
fellows. One of the fav- 
orite means by which the 
armed guards sought to 
" start something " was to 
attack and disperse these 
processions on the public 
highway. At the head of 
each procession always 
went a man or a woman 
carrying the United States 
flag. On this occasion a 
captain of militia under- 
took to wrench the flag 
from the hands of the man 
that carried it. Meeting 
with resistance the captain 
drew his sabre, and after 
cutting the hands of the 
bearer slashed the flag 
from the staff and threw it 
into the mud, where militia- 
men of the State of Mich- 
igan trampled upon it. 
t Despatches from the Associated Press correspondent. 



the associated press.f 
Calumet, 
September 15, 1913. 

To the Associated Press, 
Chicago, III. 
The flag incident of Sat- 
urday morning, in which 
a flag in the hands of a 
striker was trampled and 
torn after a parade of 
strikers had been stopped 
by the troops, was investi- 
gated by a military board 
of inquiry. Testimony of 
strikers and soldiers was 
so conflicting that the 
board was unable to place 
any blame. 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 67 

On more than one occasion the bearer and 
defender of the American flag was Anna Cle- 
menc, the remarkable young woman who was 
long the inspiration of the strikers. Her ac- 
tivities and influence were so great that she 
seems to have been an object of especial hatred 
to the armed guards. She was arrested so 
many times that the police court lost track of 
the count and when she asked derisively, " Well, 
which charge is it now? " the chop-fallen clerk 
could not tell her. Many times she has been 
dragged through the streets and thrust into a 
jail cell, beaten, ridden down with the horses 
of the gunmen and trampled upon, but every 
morning found her early abroad upon her regu- 
lar employment, which was to talk to the miners 
and encourage them to keep their lines un- 
broken. She was accustomed to incessant in- 
sult from the gunmen and the uniformed 
soldiers of the state of Michigan, but once when 
a member of the militia proceeded to an un- 
mentionable liberty she suddenly wrenched his 
rifle from his hands and beat him over the head 
with it — an act promptly recorded as an out- 
break of violence on the part of the strikers. 

The attacks made upon her never seemed to 
daunt her spirit, but they broke her physical 
strength. Early in January she suffered a 



68 



DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 



nervous collapse, and for some weeks she lay 
in her mother's house, unconscious part of the 
time and part of the time shaken with nervous 
convulsions. 



the associated press. 
Calumet, 
October, 20, 1913. 

To the Associated Press, 
Chicago, III. 

The stable at Centennial 
Heights used by the mine 
guards employed by the 
Centennial Mining Com- 
pany burned to-night, and 
the authorities believe the 
blaze was of incendiary ori- 
gin. A large number of 
strikers gathered at the 
scene and hooted the fire 
fighters. 

the associated press. 

Calumet, Mich. 

October 92, 1913. 

To the Associated Press, 
Chicago, III. 

". . . As a measure of 
precaution against possible 
disorder, the troops have 
kept on the move bodies 
of strikers who collect 
while men are going to 
work in the morning, but 
this is not construed as in- 
terference with any of 
the rights of the strikers." 



THE AFFIDAVITS. 

The fire was started 
from the cigarette of a 
drunken guard. Most of 
the guards were drunk 
most of the time. Some 
persons of the neighbor- 
hood gathered and tried to 
help to extinguish the fire, 
and were driven off by 
drunken guards. Nobody 
jeered the fire fighters. 



THE AFFIDAVITS. 

For instance, Victor 
Ozonick swears that on 
July 31 he was walking 
quietly along the public 
road when he was arrested, 
taken to Houghton and 
thrust into jail. After a 
time he was taken into the 
sheriff's office and searched. 
A deputy sheriff struck 
him in the face with his 
clenched fist and then 
kicked him. He was then 
asked if he was a member 
of the miners' union. When 
he said "Yes," he was 
dragged back to a cell and 
locked up for twenty-four 
hours. After that he was 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 69 

released. No warrant was 
issued for his arrest, no 
charge was made against 
him, no proceedings of 
any kind were had. 

There are sheafs of such affidavits, relating 
the manner in which the armed guards pro- 
ceeded to obey the orders to " start something." 
The result of their efforts to obey their orders 
was a reign of terror throughout the strike 
zone. Men, women and children were shot at, 
beaten, ridden down by armed guards, or pur- 
sued along the highways. At the road inter- 
sections shacks were erected from the windows 
of which the guards could command every house 
in a village and the inmates could not stir out 
of their dwellings except under the watchful 
eyes of the gunmen and the muzzles of rifles. 

Often the miners were foreigners. The 
manifest intention was to frighten them with a 
show of authority. 

the associated press but investigation 

Calumet, _ showed - 

October 9S 1913 The arrested men were 

UCtoDer J6, lyid. not bdng taken . nto court; 

To the Associated Press, they were already there. 
Chicago, III. Some strikers and villagers 
An exciting scene was desired to attend the pro- 
enacted at the Court of ceedings, and attempted to 
Justice Jacola in Calumet enter the court room. They 
this afternoon, when were orderly. Gunmen 
thirteen strikers arrested stood massed at the door, 
as a result of disturb- and with their clubs drove 



70 



DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 



ances this morning were 
being taken into court for 
their preliminary hearing 
on various charges. Strik- 
ers in the hallway attacked 
the deputies and attempted 
to block the passageway. 
The officers were com- 
pelled to draw clubs and 
beat their way through. 
Many strikers had to be 
clubbed before access could 
be gained to the court. 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. 

October 24, 1913. 
General Abbey, in com- 
mand of the troops, is of 
the opinion that yesterday's 
wave of lawlessness was 
the outcome of the slow- 
ness of the mining compan- 
ies in taking advantage of 
the injunction and the 
small number of successful 
prosecutions of strike 



THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. 

November 30. 
The introduction of 
eight-hour day in all the 
mines on Monday leaves 
recognition about the only 
demand not met by the 
operators. 



the strikers back, throwing 
some of them over the rail- 
ing of the stairs. The head 
of one striker was laid 
open with the club of a 
gunman. There was no at- 
tack upon the deputies. 



WHAT INVESTIGATION 
SHOWED. 

The wave of lawlessness 
was as follows: 

A train on the Chicago 
& Northwestern Railroad 
arrived at Hancock on its 
way to Calumet. A num- 
ber of persons attempted 
to board it at the station, 
when they were pushed 
from the car platforms by 
armed men. This ap- 
praised the crowd that the 
train was loaded with 
strike breakers proceeding 
(in violation of the laws of 
the United States) under 
armed guard. The crowd 
began to throw stones at 
the train, and broke all the 
windows on one side of one 
car before the train pulled 
out. 

THE FACTS. 

Strictly speaking, no im- 
portant demand of the 
miners had been met by 
the operators. 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 71 

The miners asked for an eight-hour day, a 
minimum wage for workers below the surface of 
$3 a day, an advance of 35 cents a day for 
workers above the surface, the concession that 
two men might be employed upon a drill and 
that there might be recognition of the union. 

Their work day had been of ten and eleven 
hours, for an average daily wage of $2.35 for 
men under the surface, who were also exposed 
to the grave dangers that resulted from the 
rule that but one man should be employed on 
a drill. 

The concessions now made were a nine-hour 
day, or its equivalent, and some increase of pay 
for the men under the surface, but nothing for 
the surface workers. But even these conces- 
sions were limited to men that would abjure the 
union and surrender their cards therein. 

As soon as the limelight of public attention 
was turned upon this strike by outside investi- 
gation the company could hardly do anything 
else but make concessions. A comparison, for 
instance, between the huge profits of this over- 
swollen concern and the earnings of its workmen 
would look exceedingly ill in the public prints. 
Also a comparison between the elegant houses in 
Brookline and Commonwealth Avenue and the 
miserable shacks that are provided by this com- 



!7& DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

pany for the inhabitation of its workers ; also 
between the emoluments of the directors, whose 
sole toil consists of declaring the 400 per cent, 
dividends, and the incomes of the men that at 
the risk of their lives produce these charming 
aggregations of wealth. But so long as con- 
cessions, whether real or imaginary, were 
coupled with the condition that the men must 
give up their union, which was their only pos- 
sible protection against the greed and rapacity 
of their employers, the talk of compromise was 
perfectly idle. It was not alone for a few cents 
a day the men struck, but that they might feel 
that something stood between them and the 
tremendous power holding their living in its 
hands. 

Possibly, also, an additional reason why the 
Calumet and Hecla was shy about publicity was 
that it did not care to have too much attention 
paid to this matter of the title to its domain. 

Whenever this point is raised, as it was by 
Secretary of Labor Wilson in his speech at 
Seattle, it is bluffed off by reference to a case 
once decided by the Supreme Court of Michi- 
gan, in which the validity of the company's title 
was upheld. But this decision covered another 
matter and on the real point at issue no court 
has ever ruled. For the fact is that the origi- 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 73 

nal grant, made to a canal company, contained 
a provision that if mineral should be discovered 
the land should revert to the government, and 
as many millions of dollars worth of mineral 
has since been discovered there and utilized for 
the making of Back Bay fortunes the question 
is whether those fortunes do not really belong 
to the people of the United States and not to 
the gracious precincts of the Back Bay. 

At all events a Commissioner of the Federal 
Land Office has held that the land now claimed 
by the Calumet and Hecla really belongs to the 
government, and on exactly the same grounds 
the government is now engaged in recovering 
oil lands grabbed off by the Southern Pacific. 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. THE AFFIDAVITS. 

Calumet, Mich., Dec. 11. A mob composed chiefly 
— Guerilla warfare, which of the gentlemen of the 
raged in the South Range Citizens' Alliance gathered 
district of the copper in Houghton, and went by 
miners' strike zone, was special train to South 
ended to-day, when a force Range. There the mob at- 
of deputy sheriffs invaded tacked the hall of the South 
several towns there and Range branch of the West- 
made 39 arrests. The only em Federation of Miners, 
person injured was Tim- broke down the door, 
othy Driscoll, a deputy smashed all the furniture, 
sheriff, who was shot and seized all the books, papers 
seriously wounded when he and records, and destroyed 
and other officers attempted several thousand relief cou- 
to force an entrance into a pons that had been pre- 
union hall. pared for the miners' fam- 

The trouble this morn- ilies. Henry Koski, the 

ing centered around the secretary of the branch, 

hall of the Western Feder- lived over the hall. When 



74 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

ation of Miners in the town the work of destruction be- 

of South Range. Here low had been completed the 

Driscoll was shot and sev- mob rushed upstairs and 

eral of the arrests were began with rifles to beat 

made. Henry Oski, a down the door to Koski's 

striker, was specifically rooms. He warned the 

charged with wounding the rioters that if they did not 

officer, and he is said to desist he would fire. They 

have implicated by a con- continued to batter the 

fession two other members door, whereupon he fired 

of the union. two shots, one of which 

passed through the belly 
„of one of the rioters. 

As I have said, the principal occupation of 
the armed guards was to pursue, pester, and 
terrify the miners that ventured upon the high- 
way. On December 10th, Emil Jirakoski and 
Leonard Arvola, miners, of the village of Tri- 
mountain, started along the road to South 
Range, where they intended to make some pur- 
chases at a store. A body of guards saw them 
and gave chase, shouting threats to kill them. 
Badly terrified, they ran for protection to the 
hall of the union. They found it locked and 
unoccupied. Then they dashed upstairs to the 
rooms of Secretary Koski and begged him for 
protection. 

They were in hiding in his house until the 
next morning and were witnesses of the chapter 
of truly guerilla warfare that ensued. 

The Citizens' Alliance held a meeting at 
Houghton that night and it appears that at 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 75 

the close a cry was raised that those present 
should go to South Range, eight miles away, 
and break up the nest of strikers there. The 
thing must have been all pre-arranged, for the 
railroad company (controlled by the Calumet 
and Hecla) had two special trains ready at the 
station. The rioters, armed with rifles, it is 
said, from the neighboring state armory, 
boarded these trains and went to South Range, 
arriving a half hour after midnight. 

The hall of the union was the ground floor 
of a small building on a street corner. No one 
was in it. The rioters beat down the door with 
the butt ends of their rifles. After they had 
wrecked the place, as above described, some of 
the guards must have directed attention to the 
secretary upstairs, who, that morning, had 
sheltered the two fugitives, for the mob imme- 
diately tramped upstairs and began to batter 
at Koski's door. 

From the other side he explained that his 
wife and his baby were very sick and he was 
caring for them, but if his visitors would return 
at 7 o'clock in the morning he would admit 
them or go with them, as they might prefer. 
Meantime, he courteously begged them to go 
away. 

They went down stairs and, presently re- 



76 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

turning in greater numbers, renewed their as- 
sault upon the door, which they were battering 
to pieces when Koski once more raised his voice 
to warn them that they were trespassers and 
if they persisted in their attack he would fire. 

They paid no heed to this warning and he 
fired, wounding Driscoll, one of the armed 
guards. 

The mob retreated to the street, whence it 
emptied its rifles into the house where two per- 
sons lay ill, so that the inmates were obliged 
to crouch upon the floor to escape the bullets. 

At 7 o'clock that morning Koski and the two 
men he had sheltered were arrested and taken 
to Houghton, where they were thrust into jail. 

Subsequently Koski was held in $10,000 bail 
on the charge of assault with intent to commit 
murder in the first degree, and the other two, 
if you will believe me, were held in $1,000 each 
on the charge of " inciting to riot." 

There was no confession by anybody and no 
chance of a confession. 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. THE FACTS. 

Calumet, Mich., Dec. 26. A mob broke into the 

— Charles H. Moyer, presi- room in Scott's Hotel, 

dent of the Western Fed- Hancock, occupied by Mr. 

eration of Miners, was put Moyer and Charles Tanner, 

on a train and sent out of General Auditor of the 

the copper strike district Western Federation of 

to-night. The deportation Miners, seized them both 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 



77 



was the direct result of a 
refusal of families stricken 
by the Christmas Eve dis- 
aster here to accept relief 
from a committee, the ma- 
jority of whose members 
belonged to the Citizens' 
Alliance, an organization 
combating the five months' 
strike of the Federation. 

At the local federation 
headquarters Moyer's de- 
parture was called a M kid- 
napping by the Citizens' 
Alliance." The action was 
said to have caused no 
great surprise, as it was 
said that threats of such 
a possibility had been re- 
ceived two weeks ago. 

The relief committee, 
which had collected $25,000, 
found itself unable to give 
away one cent when it 
started to-day to deliver 
the fund. 

Every bereaved house- 
hold that was approached 
told the men and women 
in charge of the distribu- 
tion that they had been 
promised adequate aid by 
the Western Federation of 
Miners, and nowhere was 
there any assistance 
wanted. 



beat and kicked them, shot 
Moyer in the back and 
dragged them, both wound- 
ed, from the hotel into the 
street. 

The two prisoners were 
held so that they could not 
defend nor protect them- 
selves, and in this position 
were dragged through the 
streets and across the 
bridge to Houghton, being 
incessantly kicked and 
beaten. Mr. Moyer was 
bleeding and weak from a 
revolver shot, and Mr. Tan- 
ner was bleeding from a 
wound just below his right 
eye. 

In this condition they 
were placed upon a train 
and under armed guard 
taken out of the State, be- 
ing threatened with lynch- 
ing if they should return. 

Nobody has been in- 
dicted nor arrested for 
these assaults, although the 
persons that committed 
them are perfectly well 
known in Hancock. 

But Mr. Moyer has been 
indicted for conspiracy. 



At the center of the bridge it was proposed 
to throw the prisoners into Portage Lake, and 
Moyer was carried to the side railing for that 
purpose. But part of the mob insisted that 
the prisoners should be taken to the railroad 



78 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

station, reminding the others that " Jim " was 
to meet them there. This plan prevailed, and 
the prisoners, still beaten and kicked, were 
dragged to the station, where a large, athletic, 
well-dressed man in a powerful automobile 
awaited them. According to Moyer's story, 
he descended from his machine, shook his fist in 
Moyer's face, denounced him, and said: 

" If you ever come back to this country, I'll 
have you lynched ! " 

When Mr. Moyer was able to make a state- 
ment he said that he thought that the " Jim " 
that supervised this lynching party was Mr. 
James MacNaughton, vice-president and gen- 
eral manager of the Calumet and Hecla. Mr. 
MacNaughton is a large, athletic gentleman, 
drives a powerful automobile and is known to 
his acquaintances as " Jim." As soon as Mr. 
Moyer's statement appeared Mr. MacNaugh- 
ton entered a vigorous denial and the Associated 
Press reported that Mr. MacNaughton could 
not possibly have been " Jim," because the 
train on which Moyer and Tanner were kid- 
napped left at 9:27 and at 9:45, 18 minutes 
later, Mr. MacNaughton walked into the Mis- 
cowaubic Club at Calumet, nine miles away. 
On January 8th three reporters in a hired 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 79 

taxicab covered this distance over roads heavy 
with snow in 22 minutes. 

Mr. MacNaughton left in a few days for 
Chicago. Reporters discovered that he was at 
the Blackstone Hotel in that city and gathered 
to interview him. According to the printed 
reports, Mr. MacNaughton went to the home 
of a friend, whence, without returning to the 
hotel, he telephoned to have his baggage sent 
to him. When next heard from he was in Bos- 
ton for his health. I could not discover that 
before his departure from Calumet his health 
had seemed visibly precarious. But perhaps he 
did go to Boston for his health, and, of course* 
that city is well known for its salubrious and 
restorative climate, particularly in the winter- 
time. However this may be, his absence from 
Calumet was much regretted, especially by the 
investigators, not all of whom seemed to be 
perfectly satisfied with the story of his move- 
ments of the night of the riot. 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.* THE FACTS. 

Calumet, Mich., The inquest was con- 
December 30, 1913. ducted by the Public Prose- 
Two out of a score or cutor, who holds his place 
more of witnesses testified at the will of the Calumet 
before a coroner's jury to- and Hecla. I have exam- 
day that the man who ined the affidavits of six 
caused the Christmas Eve persons supporting in de- 

* From the Washington Post. 



80 



DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 



tail the story of the two 
witnesses contemptuously 
referred to above. These 
and others were ready to 
testify, but were not called. 
Judge Hilton, counsel for 
the Federation of Miners, 
was present, but was not 
allowed to put any ques- 
tions. The inquest was 
rather a farce. The cor- 
oner's jury stood 3 to 3 
about a verdict explicitly 
whitewashing the Alliance. 
Some wanted a verdict de- 
claring that somebody went 
into the hall and shouted 
"Fire" but whether he 
wore a Citizens' Alliance 
button could not be ascer- 
tained. 



disaster here wore a white 
button like the badge of 
the Citizens' Alliance. The 
president and half a dozen 
members of the women's 
auxiliary of the federation 
swore that they saw no in- 
signia on the man, and un- 
ion members who stood in 
the vestibule of Italian 
Hall for one hour before 
the panic started said the 
alarm came from within 
the hall, and that no per- 
son wearing such a button 
had passed them. 

John Burcar, who gave 
his age as 15 and said he 
had lost a sister in the dis- 
aster, excitedly told of see- 
ing a man muffled to his 
eyes in a fur-collared over- 
coat enter the hall. " He 
hollered ' Fire ! ' and then 
ran out," said the boy. 
" I ran out, too. He had 
an Alliance button on his 
coat." 



The fact is that Calumet was overran at the 
time with ruffians, thugs, gunmen and gang- 
sters, brought to the region to overawe the 
strikers and " start something." Although 
the law of the state of Michigan explicitly for- 
bids such employment, these men were sworn 
in as deputy sheriffs and were nominally in the 
service of the county. All of these ruffians 
wore the badge of the Citizens' Alliance. The 
affidavits show that they were habitually or 



WHEN WORKINGMEN PROTEST 81 

continuously intoxicated. A chief part of 
their business was to annoy and pursue strikers 
in the streets and highways. There is indubi- 
table testimony that some of these men were in 
and about the hall that afternoon. Since no 
sane and sober person could possibly have be- 
lieved a lire to exist in that hall, the only plausi- 
ble theory of the disaster is that one of these 
drunken ruffians thought it would be fun and 
in the line of his usual vocation to break up this 
meeting of the hated strikers by shouting 
"Fire!" 

This was the idea that so bitterly incensed 
the strikers. The Citizens' Alliance upheld the 
presence of the ruffians ; they wore its badge and 
operated with its approval. 

But Public Opinion decides great strikes and 
how far Public Opinion may have been influ- 
enced by the remarkable collection of erroneous 
dispatches exhibited in the foregoing pages 
every reader can determine for himself. 



CHAPTER III 
CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 

That was in Michigan, where workingmen 
came into conflict with one of the two great 
Groups that exercise over our public affairs so 
vast and insidious an influence. .It shows what 
power can be swayed by the Morgan Group 
whenever it is deemed necessary to defeat a 
strike or overwhelm organized labor. 

Observe next what happened in Colorado, 
where workingmen came similarly into conflict 
with the other Group, the great Oil Group. 

This chapter ought to be of unusual interest 
to you, for it not only reveals the enormous 
resources, strength, arrogance and lawlessness 
of the Controlling Interests but shows how 
much labor can expect from the most advantage- 
ous laws in its favor so long as the enforcement 
of those laws is in the hands of its enemies. 

In Colorado the labor element is strong, and 
the politicians, always playing the game, have 
been willing to fool labor into supporting one 



CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 83 

capitalistic party or the other by passing broad 
laws ostensibly in labor's interest. 

Thus in Colorado sappy reformers said that 
labor had no need to strike for the better con- 
ditions demanded in other states, because in 
Colorado these things had been made the law 
of the state and nothing therefore was left to 
the whim or the selfishness of the employer. 

In the course of time there had been enacted 
laws ostensibly securing to the miners the eight- 
hour day, semi-monthly pay days, their own 
check-weighman, the abolition of company 
stores, and the right to maintain their organi- 
zations. These are the things for which work- 
ingmen strike elsewhere. In Colorado observe, 
said the reformer, they are already secured. 

But the fact was that in the coal mining re- 
gions the employers obeyed these laws at their 
own discretion and used them as a weapon 
against organized labor. Their position was 
that if the men desired an eight-hour day or 
anything else they must first of all abjure their 
unions. 

The law was a dead letter. 

On September 23, 1913, the union miners 
went on strike to secure obedience to the law 
from the lawbreaking employers. 

That was the substance of the issue. The 



84 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

employers refused to obey the law and as the 
employers dominated the courts and the govern- 
ment there was no other way to enforce the 
law, and so the miners went on strike. 

As to this we will take some extracts from 
the sworn testimony before a committee of the 
National House of Representatives investigat- 
ing this matter. James Dalrymple, State In- 
spector of Mines, is on the stand. 

Q. How then does it [Colorado] compare with 
the statistics of the nation? [referring to coal mine 
accidents]. 

A. From the time that Colorado started to pro- 
duce coal until the beginning of 1909 it is nearly 
two to one; Colorado has killed nearly two to the 
United States's one. 

Q. To the balance of the United States? 

A. Taking the United States as a whole; and 
from that time until the beginning of 1913 it will 
run about three and one-third. 

Q. Accidents at mines, how are they handled? 
who cares for these men? Does the State main- 
tain miners' hospitals, or are these men cared for 
out of their own funds, or do the companies bear 
the expense or how? 

A. Some of the companies have hospitals, and 
the man pays so much per month to help keep him 
at the hospital. 

Q. Sort of a relief fund they pay into? 

A. Yes, they pay so much a month for a doctor 
and hospital combined. 

Q. Not voluntary? 



CIVII, WAR IN COLORADO 85 

A. No, if you work for a company you have got 
to pay the doctor. 

Q. Why don't you ask the Legislature of 
Colorado to make you direct appropriations for 
yourself and the necessary number of deputies to 
enforce this new law? 

A. I would rather ask the devil for transporta- 
tion to heaven. 

Edwin V. Brake, Deputy State Labor Com- 
missioner, was asked: 



Q. Have you any State law as to check weigh- 



men 



? 



A. Yes. 

Q. What is it? 

A. The old law was that if twenty men would 
petition they were entitled to a check weighman 
provided they paid for him themselves. 

The witness then read reports that had been 
made to him by an assistant he had assigned to 
investigate the numerous complaints that had 
come to him in anonymous letters of cheating 
by the companies in weighing coal. Following 
is an extract from the assistant's report : 

" Colorado Fuel and Iron Company's mine at 
Morley — Has no check weighman. Find the min- 
ers complaining of weights. On inspecting two 
pairs of scales I find that neither will balance and 
that the scales on the south tipple with 350 pounds 
increased the weight of a car of coal only 50 
pounds. This is very unsatisfactory to the min- 



86 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

ers, who claimed that if they asked for a check 
weighman they would be discharged. This is dis- 
puted by Mr. Harrington, the company attorney 
at Denver. 

At the C. F. & I. Company mines at Berwind 
and Tobasco I was positively refused to be al- 
lowed to examine the scales and was told that I 
had nothing to do with them. I found the mine 
policed by a gunman, ready to run any one out of 
town that didn't suit him." 

After explaining the truck, or company store 
system, Commissioner Brake said : " We have 
a great many cases of complaint where they 
have to pay $1 a month." 

Q. What for? 

A. For an employment agent to keep them in 
a job. 

All of which again was in direct violation of 
the law. 

Q. Why have not you as Commissioner of Labor 
prosecuted these companies for their violation of 
the law? 

A. Well, most of these violations occur in Las 
Animas and Huerfano Counties. You, being a 
stranger here (the committee was sitting in Den- 
ver), it is permissible for you to ask that question, 
but anybody that lives here knows that you cannot 
prosecute anybody in that country. 

The witness added : " The deputy factory 
inspectors are specifically charged with the en- 



CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 87 

forcement of the child labor law in this State 
and we have a great many violations down 
there, and we tried to get some prosecutions on 
that, but we could not." 

On the subject of wages the witness said: 
" The average gross earnings per day for the 
312 days in the year would be $2.24. Then 
there are some fixed charges." 

Q. You stated a while ago that the State's at- 
torneys met about a year ago and decided to prose- 
cute for infractions of the law in the State of Colo- 
rado. Is that a new thing in the State of 
Colorado ? 

A. Well, yes, I should think so. I for four 
years couldn't get a prosecution in this county. 

These brief extracts are printed here as no 
more than samples and to indicate how just and 
well founded are the pratings of the men and 
the newspapers that condemn the Colorado 
miners as violators of law and order. As a 
matter of fact the mine owners had abolished 
all law long before the strike began and had set 
up a government of their own. The miners in- 
stead of being the enemies of law and order 
were their champions. They were endeavoring 
to have the law of the state respected and to 
cause the anarchist mine owners to respect the 
Constitution of the state and of the United 



88 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

States. That is perfectly plain from the above 
testimony and no fair-minded person can hold 
any other opinion. The simple fact is that the 
mining companies were the lawbreakers ; the 
miners were the law-defenders. 

The companies brought in thugs and gun- 
men, most of them experienced and seasoned 
men that had served in West Virginia and Mich- 
igan. The JBaldwin-Felz detective agency sent 
in their most expert man-killers, although Sec- 
tion S of the state laws of Colorado on Labor 
Disputes reads — " Any person or persons who 
shall hire, aid, abet, or assist in hiring, through 
agencies or otherwise, persons to guard with 
arms or deadly weapons of any kind, other per- 
son or property in this State, or any person 
who shall come into this State armed with deadly 
weapons of any kind for any such pur- 
pose, without a permit in writing from the 
Governor of this State, shall be guilty of a fel- 
ony." 

The militia of the state was also brought out 
to overawe the strikers. 

As usual in such instances the miners lived in 
houses owned by the mining companies and as 
soon as the strike began they were dispossessed. 
Tents were furnished by the miners 5 organiza- 
tion and the homeless families were sheltered in 



CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 89 

these. As winter came on the sufferings of the 
tent dwellers were acute. 

The principal mining company involved was 
the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, a pos- 
session of the Oil Group. John D. Rockefeller, 
Jr., is the active spirit in this company. When 
he was on the stand before the House Commit- 
tee this occurred: 

The Chairman — Let me tell you this and see 
what you think about it. In some of the camps 
out there, it is so testified to — and I think some 
in which your company is interested — a town is 
incorporated, and all the property there is owned 
by your company, with a sign up, " Private Prop- 
erty." These incorporated mining towns elect a 
mayor, who is usually the mine superintendent or 
some one connected with the mine. They conduct 
the business of the town, levying a poll tax of 
$1.50 on the miners, and with the saloon licenses 
are able to conduct the town and pay the expenses. 
Have you ever looked into that to find out whether 
or not that is a fact? 

Mr. Rockefeller — No ; I have no knowledge 
of that. I should think it would be quite neces- 
sary and proper that when a company bought a 
mine it should buy property in the vicinity of the 
mine to provide for the workers who must inevit- 
ably be there to work the mine. I should think 
that that was a wise policy, to buy lands in the 
vicinity — 

The Chairman — All around the mine? 

Mr. Rockefeller — So as to concentrate conven- 
iently the residences of the employes. 



90 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

The Chairman — And then these people living 
in this town — the miners, those who work for the 
companies — are compelled to rent your property ? 

Mr. Rockefeller — You say " compelled " — 

The Chairman — Yes, " compelled/' if they 
work for your company. 

Mr. Rockefeller — They are not compelled to 
work for the company. 

A committee was appointed by the governor 
of Colorado to investigate charges made against 
the conduct of the state militia in the strike, 
and the committee unanimously agreed that 
Lieut. E. K. Linderfelt, who was in charge of 
the militia quartered near Ludlow, was doing 
all in his power to provoke the strikers to vio- 
lence. It seemed to the committee that he was 
especially anxious to get Louis Tikas into trou- 
ble. Once he arrested him for some trivial of- 
fense and held him without lodging a charge 
against him. The report reads : 

" We have reason to believe that it is his (Lin- 
der felt's) deliberate purpose to provoke the strik- 
ers to bloodshed. Every decent member of the 
militia who knows Louis Tikas will testify that he 
is an admirable man for the place he fills; that he 
is fair, and that he will assist the militia in every 
proper way in policing the neighborhood, yet it 
is this man whom Linderfelt tries to provoke in 
order that some other members of the colony will 
be aroused out of sympathy, and it is this man 
whom Linderfelt is reported to have threatened to 
kill on the slightest provocation.'' 



CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 91 

It was not long before the majority of the 
gunmen were wearing militia uniforms. The 
state ran so far in debt that the militia had to 
be withdrawn. The ranks of the strikers re- 
mained unbroken. Something had to be done 
to break the strike. Gunmen therefore were 
organized as militia, in total violation of the 
law of the state. Troop A was organized by 
Lieutenant Linderfelt. Ninety per cent, of its 
members were furnished by the coal company. 

Company B was composed of gunmen and 
mine guards under the command of Major Ham- 
rock. None of the company had a permanent 
occupation sufficiently important to warrant 
his return to Denver when the general order for 
the recall of the militia was issued. 

Between the gunmen and the miners inces- 
sant war was waged. The miners secured arms 
and took to the hills, whither they were fol- 
lowed by the gunmen. Not a day passed with- 
out at least a skirmish, and often there were 
long fought battles. One lasted for fourteen 
hours. How many were killed in these fierce 
struggles will never be known, but certainly the 
casualties were not light on either side. All 
day long one could hear the cracking of the 
rifles in the hills and see the gunmen deploying 
as they sought to attack or ambush a party of 



92 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

miners. It has been asserted, and probably 
with reasrm, that more men were killed or 
wounded in Colorado in these months than fell 
in battle on the American side in the entire 
Spanish- American war. 

The culmination of many scenes of horror 
was at Ludlow, one of the tent colonies that had 
been established when the miners were dispos- 
sessed. The place lay in a hollow surrounded 
with hills. The militia-gunmen were wont to 
lie in the hills and fire down upon the tents. 
To get out of range the inmates had dug under 
the floors of the tents holes and pits into which 
they crawled when they heard the rifles of the 
gunmen opening fire. 

On this particular day the men of the camp 
had gone to the hills to fight and scarcely any- 
one was left about the tents except women and 
children. What happened next I shall not at- 
tempt to tell in my own words but in those of 
an eye witness in no way connected with either 
side and therefore impartial and trustworthy. 

He is a young electrical engineer named 
Godfrey Irwin, who happened to be on the spot. 
This is his testimony: 

" On the day of the Ludlow battle a chum and 
myself left the house of the Rev. J. O. Ferris, the 
Episcopal minister with whom I boarded in Trini- 



CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 93 

dad, for a long tramp through the hills. We 
walked fourteen miles, intending to take the Colo- 
rado & Southern Railroad back to Trinidad from 
Ludlow station. 

" We were going down a trail on the mountain 
side above the tent city at Ludlow when my chum 
pulled my sleeve and at the same instant we heard 
shooting. The militia were coming out of Has- 
tings Canyon and firing as they came. W T e lay 
flat behind a rock and after a few minutes I raised 
my hat aloft on a stick. Instantly bullets came 
in our direction. One penetrated my hat. The 
militiamen must have been watching the hillside 
through glasses and thought my old hat betrayed 
the whereabouts of a sharpshooter of the miners. 

" Then came the killing of Louis Tikas, the 
Greek leader of the strikers. We saw the militia- 
men parley outside the tent city and a few minutes 
later, Tikas came out to meet them. We watched 
them talking. Suddenly an officer raised his rifle, 
gripping the barrel, and felled Tikas with the butt. 

" Tikas fell face downward. As he lay there 
we saw the militiamen fall back. Then they 
aimed their rifles and deliberately fired them into 
the unconscious man's body. It was the first mur- 
der I had ever seen, for it was a murder and noth- 
ing less. Then the miners ran about in the tent 
colony and women and children scuttled for safety 
in the pits which afterward trapped them. 

" We watched from our rock shelter while the 
militia dragged up their machine guns and poured 
a murderous fire into the arroya from a height by 
Water Tank Hill above the Ludlow depot. Then 
came the firing of the tents. 

" I am positive that by no possible chance could 
they have been set ablaze accidentally. The 



94 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

militiamen were thick about the northwest corner 
of the colony where the fire started and we could 
see distinctly from our lofty observation place what 
looked like a blazing torch waved in the midst of 
militia a few seconds before the general conflagra- 
tion swept through the place. What followed 
everybody knows. 

"Sickened by what we had seen we took a 
freight back into Trinidad. The town buzzed with 
indignation. To explain in large part the sympa- 
thies of even the best people in the section with 
the miners, it must be said that there is good evi- 
dence that many of the so-called ' militiamen ' are 
only gunmen and thugs wearing the uniform to 
give them a show of authority. They are the 
toughest lot I ever saw. 

" No one can legally enlist in the Colorado State 
militia till he has been a year in the state, and 
many of the ' militiamen ' admitted to me they had 
been drafted in by a Denver detective agency. 
Lieut. Linderfelt boasted that he was ' going to 
lick the miners or wipe them off the earth.' In 
Trinidad the miners never gave any trouble. It 
was not till the militia came into town that the 
trouble began." 

To this I add the following illuminating ex- 
tract from the report of the Military Probe 
Committee : 

" We find that the tents were not all of them 
destroyed by accidental fire. Men and soldiers 
swarmed into the colony and deliberately assisted 
the conflagration of spreading the fire from tent 
to tent. 

" Beyond a doubt, it was seen to intentionally 



CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 95 

that the fire should destroy the whole of the colony. 
This, too, was accompanied by the usual loot. 

" Men and soldiers seized and took from the 
tents whatever appealed to their fancy of the mo- 
ment. In this way, clothes, bedding, articles of 
jewelry, bicycles, tools and utensils were taken 
from the tents and conveyed away. 

" So deliberate was this burning and looting that 
we find that cans of oil found in the tents were 
poured upon them and the tents lit with matches." 

And then this comment by the Rocky Moun- 
tain News of Denver, the only newspaper that 
printed any adequate account of these events 
and sued afterward for $500,000 libel by the 
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company: 

" The horror of the shambles at Ludlow is over- 
whelming. Not since the days when pitiless red 
men wreaked vengeance upon intruding frontiers- 
men and upon their women and children has 
this western country been stained with so foul a 
deed. 

" The details of the massacre are horrible. 
Mexico offers no barbarity so base as that of the 
murder of defenceless women and children by the 
mine guards in soldiers' clothing. Like whitened 
sepulchres we boast of American civilization with 
this infamous thing at our very doors. Huerta 
murdered Madero, but even Huerta did not shoot 
an innocent little boy seeking water for his mother 
who lay ill. Villa is a barbarian, but in his mad- 
dest excess Villa has not turned machine guns on 
imprisoned women and children. Where is the out- 
law so far beyond the pale of human kind as to 



96 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

burn the tent over the heads of nursing mothers 
and helpless little babies? 

" Out of this infamy one fact stands clear. Ma- 
chine guns did the murder. The machine guns 
were in the hands of mine guards, most of whom 
were also members of the state militia. It was 
private war, with the wealth of the richest man in 
the world behind the mine guards/' 

Two women and eleven children were mur- 
dered here. Some of the bodies of the little 
children were found with their hands burned off 
to the wrists. They had found themselves being 
suffocated by the smoke of the burning tents 
and had tried to grope their way out of the 
holes in which they had sought refuge. One 
boy was killed while trying to get water for his 
imprisoned mother. 

Subsequently Lieutenant Linderfelt was tried 
by a court martial for his murder of Louis 
Tikas, and found guilty of manslaughter. 

On June 18 the sentence of the court was pro- 
nounced upon him. 

It was that in punishment for the deed of 
which he had been found guilty he should un- 
dergo the loss of five numbers in his rank. 

That is to say, if he had been No. 25 among 
the lieutenants he was now to be No. 30. 

Not a word of this extraordinary sentence 
seems to have been sent out by the news 



CIVIL WAR IN COLORADO 97 

agencies. So far as search has revealed only 
five or six newspapers in the United States have 
ever printed it or referred to it. In New York 
the only publication of the sentence to this day 
has been in the columns of the New York Call, 
the Socialist daily. 

So here are the plain facts about this matter. 
You pass laws to secure better conditions for 
labor. The corporations refuse to obey those 
laws and the officers of the state by their own 
admission find themselves powerless to enforce 
the statutes against so great a power. 

Workingmen strike to secure the rights guar- 
anteed to them by these broken laws. 

The corporations bring in gunmen to shoot 
down the strikers. 

Civil war ensues with scenes of revolting 
slaughter. 

Most newspapers carefully suppress the 
facts. Those that tell what has happened are 
sued for libel by the corporations. 

Even deeds so horrible as the coldblooded 
murder of Louis Tikas cannot be punished and 
the newspapers refuse to print the fact of the 
farcical result of the trials. 

Where, then, do you stand, workingman? 



CHAPTER IV 

A STARTLING DETONATION IN HIGH 
QUARTERS ABOUT THE TRUSTS 

On January 16, 1914, President Wilson took 
his way to the chamber of the national House 
of Representatives and read there to a joint 
session of both houses his message on the great 
and burning Trust question. 

For a long time the country had looked for- 
ward to this message or some other final word on 
the subject from the President, and had good 
reason to expect something very unusual. 

Mr. Wilson had made his campaign for the 
Democratic nomination and again for election 
largely on the Trust issue. He had said many 
remarkable things in these campaigns and be- 
fore them. When he had been a candidate for 
Governor of New Jersey in 1910 the way he 
talked about Trusts and the plutocracy drew 
the attention of the nation. No man had at- 
tacked these evils in a braver spirit. Wherever 
he went he spoke of them with the utmost frank- 
ness, declaring that the life of the Republic 

98 



A STARTLING DETONATION 99 

was at stake and that it was impossible for 
democracy to continue to exist in a country 
where accumulated wealth had attained to such 
colossal power. 

He even hinted at the most drastic means in 
dealing with this power. In his New Jersey 
campaign of 1910 one of his favorite passages 
ran like this : 

" When I think of the power wielded by these 
men and of the manner in which they got their 
wealth and consequently their influence, I am 
tempted to take down my old shotgun as the 
only way to meet the emergency." 

Great enthusiasm invariably followed the de- 
livery of such remarks. Men felt that here was 
a champion without fear and without selfish 
ambition, but only desiring to rescue the Re- 
public. 

In 1911 and in the early part of 1912 Mr. 
Wilson left his post as Governor of New Jer- 
sey and made prolonged tours throughout the 
country, earnestly preaching the same doctrine. 
Everywhere he made a deep impression. The 
dominance and rapacity of the Trusts was his 
theme, and the urgent need that their abnormal 
power should be sharply curbed. In his book, 
" The New Freedom," he had elaborated the 
same thought, and made of it what might be 



100 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

called an unanswerable demonstration. When 
people listened to the eloquence with which the 
author supported on the platform the argu- 
ment he had made so convincing in his writings, 
the feeling was general that here was a marvel- 
ous new leader, a man of unshakable courage 
and great wisdom. 

For thirty years the growing power of ac- 
cumulated wealth had worried all patriots. 
Here was the man that saw how to solve the 
problem and assuredly would solve it if he had 
the chance. 

This feeling of the people was the thing that 
put Mr. Wilson over at the national conven- 
tion of the Democratic party. People at large 
had confidence in him. It is true that he was 
supported at Baltimore by all the railroads 
and the railroad politicians and railroad dele- 
gates, but even these could not have nominated 
him without the general belief of the people that 
here was a man that knew how to curb the Big 
Business and could not be controlled nor fooled. 
Other men had been fooled and might be. But 
not the man that wrote " The New Freedom " 
and gave to the country that wonderful vision 
of emancipation from the power that had seized 
the government. 



A STARTLING DETONATION 101 

This is why there was such intense interest 
in the President's Trust message on January 
16. He had been in office ten months then and 
had done nothing whatever to curb the Trusts 
nor to diminish the sway of accumulated wealth, 
but had on the contrary shown many alarming 
signs of yielding to these powers of evil. It 
was believed however that he was but waiting 
to deliver a message that would end all doubt 
and put to rout the enemies of the republic. 

Some of the things he had done had been 
exceedingly disquieting to his friends and ad- 
mirers among the people. 

When he selected his cabinet, for instance. 
His Secretary of the Treasury was chosen for 
him by Kuhn, Loeb & Co., of Wall Street; his 
Secretary of Commerce was the active head 
of the Blower Trust, which had been investi- 
gated by the very department of which he now 
became the chief; his Attorney General was a 
graduate of the office of Paul Cravath, one of 
the most conspicuous and adroit corporation 
lawyers in the United States ; his Secretary of ^ 
Agriculture was a beneficiary of the insidious 
Rockefeller Fund, his Secretary of War had 
been a judge in New Jersey at a time when the 
Pennsylvania Railroad ruled the state with ab- 



102 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

solute power; his Secretary of the Navy and 
Postmaster General were Southern reaction- 
aries. 

But this was not the worst of the story. 
The man that obviously should have been At- 
torney General was Louis Brandeis, who first 
had exposed and then had valiantly fought the 
rotten management of the New Haven railroad. 
Mr. Brandeis was slated for the place ; if it was 
not directly promised to him his friends were 
given to understand that he was to have it; 
and Mr. Brandeis himself was twice summoned 
to Princeton to confer with Mr. Wilson, when 
the powers back of New Haven, which were 
chiefly the great Morgan Group and allies, put 
forth their influence, and Mr. Brandeis was 
turned down and Mr. Cravath's protege ap- 
pointed. 

It was then given out that Mr. Brandeis was 
to be Secretary of Commerce. Again the New 
Haven crowd pulled the strings and Mr. Bran- 
deis was sacrificed for the head of the Blower 
Trust. 

In other words, a Trust man was set to catch 
the Trusts. 

One of the first important issues with which 
Mr. McReynolds, the new Attorney General, 



A STARTLING DETONATION 103 

was called upon to deal with was the celebrated 
Anti-Trust case that is called the " Dissolution 
of the Harriman Merger." 

Now here was a Trust that had furnished 
a conspicuous instance of the lawless power of 
accumulated wealth put on trial. 

The late E. H. Harriman had practically 
combined the Union Pacific and the Southern 
Pacific, for thirty years rivals and competitors, 
and in so doing was alleged to have violated 
the Sherman Anti-Trust law, forbidding com- 
binations in restraint of trade. 

This law was passed in 1890 to abolish 
Trusts. For many years, so far as Trusts 
were concerned, it was a dead letter, or worse. 
One Attorney General declared frankly that he 
had no intention of enforcing it; others said 
that it could not be enforced, which was another 
way of saying the same thing. Finally, atten- 
tion being persistent^ drawn to the fact that 
whereas the law was not enforced upon Trusts, 
against which alone it was designed, it was 
being strictly enforced upon labor unions, 
against which it was never designed, the Depart- 
ment of Justice tardily awoke and began to 
bring suits against corporations that had vio- 
lated the law. The Harriman merger of the 



104 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific was one 
of the transactions that the Department now 
took up. 

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, 
and three or four years passed in which time 
the railroads continued to be operated under 
the combination exactly as before, and the gen- 
eral understanding was that they were always 
to be so operated, when the Supreme Court 
upset calculations by handing down a decision 
holding the merger to be in violation of the 
Sherman Anti-Trust law and ordering it to be 
dissolved. 

Here was a mighty unpleasant situation. 
The two roads were now controlled by the great 
and powerful Oil Group, the second of the two 
Groups of financiers that have seized between 
them the control of more than one-third of all 
the wealth in the United States. To upset the 
merger was to interfere gravely with the proj- 
ects of this group. Several plans were pro- 
posed with the idea of nominally complying 
with the decision, but in reality evading it. 
None of these was satisfactory. At last some- 
body in New York hit upon a device that was 
indeed a peach and obviated every difficulty. 

It was that the Union Pacific should be taken 
over by the Baltimore & Ohio and the Southern 



A STARTLING DETONATION 105 

Pacific should be taken over by the Pennsyl- 
vania. 

You do not see the whole exquisite beauty of 
this arrangement unless you know that the Bal- 
timore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania are both 
owned by the Oil Group which also and all the 
time owned the Southern Pacific and the Union 
Pacific. 

So that the net result of the operation was 
that the persons that had owned the properties 
continued to own them in exactly the same way 
on the same terms. 

Thus was the Harriman merger " dissolved " 
— by making it legal, binding and perpetual, 
and thus was the august order of the sacred 
Supreme Court carried into effect. Amen. 
Glory be. Thus also do we vindicate the great 
principle of regulation as a cure for our ills. 

This lovely device was worked through the 
office of Mr. Wilson's Attorney General, grad- 
uate of the office of Paul Cravath, and received 
the entire approval of the President. 

It was brought about through the mediation 
of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Wall Street, representing 
the Oil Group, an able firm to whom we are in- 
debted for our Secretary of the Treasury and 
for many things besides. 

For these reasons with others, there was 



106 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

great curiosity to know what the President 
would offer in his message as a cure for the 
Trust evil. It was felt that he could not pos- 
sibly uphold the Sherman act, because as seen 
in the foregoing illustration and many others 
that might be cited the Sherman act was a thing 
through which the Trusts could drive an eight- 
horse team abreast. When it came to prose- 
cuting the labor unions against which it was 
never designed it was a law of might and power 
and when it came to prosecuting the Trusts, 
against which it was designed, it was nothing 
but a funny joke. 

A few months later there would have been no 
such curiosity to learn the President's views 
about Trusts, because a few months later the 
country began to understand fairly where the 
President stood on this subject. It had been 
taught by events, as thus : 

Early in February a large number of working 
women from all parts of the United States 
gathered at Washington to ask the President 
to assist them in getting the ballot. The Presi- 
dent received them but declined to afford them 
any countenance in their endeavors, because, as 
he lucidly explained, he was only the mouthpiece 
of his party and bound by its declarations. 
He could not originate anything, he said; he 



A STARTLING DETONATION 107 

must carry out the platform of his party and 
as the party had not declared in its platform 
for woman suffrage, he was powerless to assist 
the movement. 

That was on a Monday. On the following 
Thursday, that is to say, three days later, Mr. 
Wilson announced that the law exempting 
American coast-wise ships from tolls in the 
Panama canal must be repealed. In this he 
not only initiated something independently of 
his party but absolutely reversed his party's 
declaration, for the Baltimore platform explic- 
itly demanded the very thing which he now said 
must not be. 

The influences that desired to have the tolls 
exemption repealed were Kuhn, Loeb & Co., 
the transcontinental railroads, owned as previ- 
ously indicated, the Oil Group and Mr. James 
J. Hill. Nobody else. Except the Canadian 
Pacific Group in England. 

From the beginning of the enterprise the 
transcontinental railroads had planned to crip- 
ple the competition of the Canal. First they 
had spent much money to prevent the Canal's 
construction. Then they had secured the se- 
lection of a route believed to be impracticable. 
At last they had obtained through President 
Wilson the very object they had always sought. 



108 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

They had abolished the competition of the Canal 
and could proceed to skin the people as before 
and in the good old way. 

If it had been known in January what course 
President Wilson would pursue to secure for 
the railroads and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. this great 
benefit there would not have been so much cu- 
riosity to know how he purposed to deal with 
the Trust problem. In fact, there would have 
been none at all. People would have known 
beforehand. 

Or if it had been known in January what an 
extraordinary stand the President would take 
on the demand of the railroads for a 5 per cent, 
increase of freight rates, no one would have 
cared much about the other matter. Who 
would have supposed in January that the Presi- 
dent of the United States would give the slight- 
est encouragement to a scheme so absolutely dis- 
honest? Or who could have thought of him as 
saying, " It is time to let up on the railroads," 
when as a matter of fact our railroad com- 
panies are nothing but gangs of financial pi- 
rates that are looting the country's transpor- 
tation system and building from fraudulent 
stock issues the colossal fortunes whose exist- 
ence, according to the author of " The New 
Freedom " threatened the life of the Republic. 



A STARTLING DETONATION 109 

Likewise, there would have been very little 
curiosity about the President's message if it 
had been known in January that he could by 
any possibility nominate for a place on the In- 
terstate Commerce Commission such a man as 
Garrison of New Jersey or that his Attorney 
General, apparently with his approval, could 
ever seek to crawfish out of the prosecution of 
the gang that wrecked the New Haven. 

But in January none of these things was 
known, and consequently the whole country was 
eager to learn what were the views of the Pres- 
ident on this great problem of the Trusts and 
accumulated wealth. The leader that had been 
put into this high office because of his fervent 
denunciations of these evil combinations was now 
about to reveal his way to eliminate them from 
the nation's life. 

So he came down to the House of Represent- 
atives on that day and to both houses in joint 
sessions he read his momentous message and 
this is what he said: 

Legislation has its atmosphere like everything 
else, and the atmosphere of accommodation and 
mutual understanding which we now breathe with 
so much refreshment is matter of sincere congrat- 
ulation. * * * 

The great business men who organized and fi- 
nanced monopoly and those who administered it in 



110 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

actual everyday transactions have year after year, 
until now, either denied its existence or justified it 
as necessary for the effective maintenance and de- 
velopment of the vast business processes of the 
country in the modern circumstances of trade and 
manufacture and finance; but all the while opinion 
has made head against them. The average busi- 
ness man is convinced that the ways of liberty are 
also the ways of peace and the ways of success 
as well; and at last the masters of business on the 
great scale have begun to yield their preference 
and purpose, perhaps their judgment also, in hon- 
orable surrender. 

What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, hap- 
pily, not to hamper or interfere with business as 
enlightened business men prefer to do it, or in any 
sense to put it under the ban. The antagonism 
between business and government is over. We are 
now about to give expression to the best business 
judgment of America, to what we know to be the 
business conscience and honor of the land. 

The government and business men are ready to 
meet each other half way in a common effort to 
square business methods with both public opinion 
and the law. The best informed men of the busi- 
ness world condemn the methods and processes and 
consequences of monopoly as we condemn them; 
and the instinctive judgment of the vast majority 
of business men everywhere goes with them. We 
shall now be their spokesmen. That is the strength 
of our position and the sure prophecy of what will 
ensue when our reasonable work is done. 

When serious contest ends, when men unite in 
opinion and purpose, those who are to change their 
ways of business joining with those who ask for 
the change, it is possible to effect it in the way in 



A STARTLING DETONATION 111 

which prudent and thoughtful and patriotic men 
would wish to see it brought about, with as few, 
as slight, as easy and simple business readjust- 
ments as possible in the circumstances, nothing es- 
sential disturbed, nothing torn up by the roots, no 
parts rent asunder which can be left in wholesome 
combination. 

Until these things are done, conscientious busi- 
ness men the country over will be unsatisfied. 
They are in these things our mentors and col- 
leagues. We are now about to write the additional 
articles of our constitution of peace — the peace 
that is honor and freedom and prosperity. 

In other words, Mr. Wilson's answer to the 
Trust problem was that there wasn't any 
Trust problem. There used to be in days gone 
by, but the old conditions had vanished now 
and no longer need any citizen be concerned 
about the power of accumulated wealth. All 
such difficulties, thank God, had been removed 
from the nation's path. Every cloud had been 
cleared away. Bright and beaming showed the 
future. 

Why was that? Why, Big Business had re- 
formed. The Trusts had become good. The 
octopus had turned angel. The monster had 
become as a little child. Once from its baleful 
presence emanated perils that threatened to 
blast the Republic; now from its gentle soul 
arose an aureola of sweet and precious influ- 



112 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

ences. Have no fear, fellow citizens ! All is 
well with us. The Trusts have become good. 
Their only desire now is to live down their past 
and prove by kindly and pious deeds the sin- 
cerity of their conversion. No need of 
strengthening the Sherman law; no need, to be 
sure, of any law. Big Business has seen the 
error of its ways and is now determined to be 
righteous. Perhaps they have been sitting at 
the feet of Billy Sunday. Anyway, they have 
repented and are now become good. 

This isn't exactly in line with the remarks in 
" The New Freedom," in which valuable work 
I find the following with other gems : 

There is one great basic fact which underlies 
all the questions that are discussed on the political 
platform at the present moment. That singular 
fact is that nothing is done in this country as it 
was done twenty years ago. 

We are in the presence of a new organization of 
society. Our life has broken away from the past. 
The life of America is not the life that it was 
twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten 
years ago. We have changed our economic con- 
ditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and with 
our economic society, the organization of our life. 
. . . We are facing the necessity of fitting a new 
social organization ... to the happiness and 
prosperity of the great body of citizens; for we 
are conscious that the new order of society has not 
been made to fit and provide the convenience or 



A STARTLING DETONATION 115 

prosperity of the average man. The life of the 
nation has grown infinitely varied. It does not 
centre now upon questions of governmental struc- 
ture or of the distribution of government powers. 
It centres upon questions of the very structure and 
operation of society itself, of which government is 
only the instrument. 

Society is looking itself over, in our day, from 
top to bottom; is making fresh and critical analy- 
sis of its very elements; is questioning its oldest 
practices as freely as its newest, scrutinizing every 
arrangement and motive of its life; and it stands 
ready to attempt nothing less than a radical recon- 
struction, which only frank and honest counsels 
and the forces of generous co-operation can hold 
back from becoming a revolution. We are in a 
temper to reconstruct economic society, as we were 
once in a temper to reconstruct political society, 
and political society may itself undergo a radical 
modification in the process. 

But when you came to contemplate the Pres- 
ident's Trust message it didn't seem as if any- 
thing had been changed. On the contrary that 
seemed to be just the same old bunk put over in 
the same old way. That was the peculiar part 
of it. Everything had changed in the United 
States except bunk, and that hadn't changed a 
bit. Even the idea of a gentleman that was a 
roaring champion of the people against the 
robbers so long as he was a candidate and when 
he got into office turned his back so he could 
not see the robbers at work — even that was 



114 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

old as the hills. But the phrases in which the 
bunk was put over, they were new. And fresh. 
And rich in sounding platitude. 

At the very moment that President Wilson 
was penning his declaration that Big Business 
had become good and all was well with us, the 
Big Business that he praised was overrunning 
Michigan with its hired murderers and carrying 
on a cruel and bloody war in Colorado. At the 
time he said that Big Business had reformed 
it was killing people just as it killed them be- 
fore. When he said that it was solely desirous 
to obey the law it had abolished all law and was 
trampling upon the Constitution. The slight- 
est investigation would have shown to Mr. Wil- 
son these facts. Without difficulty he could 
have seen that when Big Business came to the 
sanctuary it came with its hands dripping with 
blood and its pockets filled with loot. He 
would not make the investigation, he would not 
learn these simple facts. With his eyes reso- 
lutely closed he gave his benediction to massa- 
cre and shook the hands of the murderers. 

But laying aside for a moment the condition 
of labor under the iron heel of Big Business, 
wherein had Big Business really shown the 
slightest intention to mend its ways, even in 



A STARTLING DETONATION 115 

regard to the Anti-Trust laws? Or in any of 
its dealings with the public? 

At the time the President wrote, the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission was showing that 
the railroads, which are an integral part of the 
huge possessions of the Two Groups, were vio- 
lating the Interstate Commerce laws, exactly as 
before. Every Trust was operating in defiance 
of the Sherman law, as it had always operated. 
Not one monopoly had been abandoned nor re- 
laxed. The practice of cutting melons and is- 
suing watered stocks had not stopped for an 
instant, and all these stock issues remained as 
before with interest charges that the public 
must pay. Where was any indication of an in- 
tention to reform? 

More important even than all this, these cor- 
porations continued to gouge their employees 
in exactly the same old way. Every dollar 
they made was created by labor. Every divi- 
dend they declared was gouged out of labor. 
Yet labor continued to receive but a very small 
part of the wealth it created and the greater 
part went to persons that had nothing to do 
with production. 

The shareholders of the United States Steel 
Corporation, the gigantic Steel Trust, con- 



116 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

tinued to receive fat dividends, but none of these 
shareholders had any part in the production of 
steel. The men that actually produced the 
steel and created the profits received as before 
barely enough to keep themselves alive; yet it 
was their labor that enabled the dividends to be 
paid. 

So long as this condition of monstrous injus- 
tice persisted for the President to say that all 
is well with us showed one of two things to be 
true. Either he had no idea of the actual state 
of labor, in which case he ought not to be Pres- 
ident, since the working class constitutes the 
overwhelming majority of the population of 
this country. Or he did know the actual con- 
dition and did not care. 



CHAPTER V 

THE GRAND OLD SPORT OF TRUST 
BUSTING 

But President Wilson's novel idea that the 
Trusts had become righteous and therefore 
nothing need be done about them was after all 
as sensible as the idea that they can be checked, 
regulated, restrained or by any such means 
as the Sherman law compelled to return to Com- 
petition or to do anything else that they do 
not wish to do. 

This, indeed, is the joke of the ages. 

The great Trusts in this country have be- 
come the property of the two great Controlling 
Groups, and so mighty is the power of these 
Groups that even the august Supreme Court 
cannot prevail against them. 

That is the fact, however much it may be con- 
cealed from us and however diligently the kept 
press may pretend something else. 

It may be taken for granted that whatever 

these Groups desire they will get. In one way 

or another they will get it, not because they are 

117 



118 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

directed by bad men but because the control of 
such almost inconceivable wealth carries with 
it inevitably a corresponding amount of power. 
The power of wealth is always in due proportion 
to its amount. A man with a million dollars 
will exercise a certain amount of power in his 
community and a man with ten millions will ex- 
ercise ten times as much. That is inevitable 
from the nature of business under modern con- 
ditions and its ramifications and intricate in- 
terlockings. Here are men composing the Two 
Groups that together control about fifty billion 
dollars of wealth. If they work together with 
that wealth as they usually do, the power they 
can command is almost unlimited, so long as we 
have government chosen exclusively in the in- 
terests of the capitalist class. 

It is for this reason that all the experiments 
in the comical sport entitled " Busting the 
Trusts " have been such ludicrous failures. 

For more than six years the government of 
the United States was engaged in an attempt 
to bust the Standard Oil Company, the oldest 
and most ferocious of the fierce, man-eating 
Trust monsters. All the way to the Supreme 
Court it carried the war against this mighty 
octopus, and won at last what was hailed as a 
marvelous victory, for the Supreme Court not 



SPORT OF TRUST BUSTING 119 

merely busted this Trust but annihilated it. 
Trust busting more thorough could not be im- 
agined by the most ardent reformer. 

By the order of the Supreme Court, highest 
authority in the land, the Standard Oil Com- 
pany was to be dissolved and cease to be. 

So it was dissolved. The Standard Oil Com- 
pany ceased to be and its place was immediately 
taken by the Standard Oil Companies, thirty- 
seven of them, having the same owners and 
management. To bust a thing into thirty- 
seven pieces, it will be admitted, is pretty good 
busting; a thing couldn't well be much more 
thoroughly busted than that. From which you 
can see what a good job the Supreme Court 
made of this and how nice it is to have our 
Trust busted for us in this able manner. 

Yes. Well, six months after this order of 
the court had been issued and obeyed, and the 
greatest of the Trusts had been busted thus to 
pieces, the value of the securities of the Stand- 
ard Oil companies had increased $180,000,000 
and the prices of kerosene and gasoline had 
reached the highest points ever known. Since 
that time the tide of glorious prosperity has 
risen always the higher for this busted concern. 
The thirty-seven Standard Oil companies into 
which the octopus was busted have headquar- 



120 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

ters in New York at the same old 26 Broad- 
way, where you wouldn't think a thing had been 
changed, and from this place was lately issued 
a little book that gives concisely the net results 
of Trust busting to date, and they ought to 
fill with pride the heart of any patriot. Like 
this: 

The capital stock of the concern " at dissolu- 
tion " was $277,015,954; on July 1, 1913, it 
was only $423,449,947, not quite double what 
it was before the government destroyed the 
" company." The cash dividends paid in 1912, 
according to the same report, were $51,813,334; 
for the first half of 1913 the dividends were 
$71,224,543, almost three times what was paid 
before dissolution. The value of the capi- 
tal stock on the market was almost destroyed 
by the dissolution, being officially listed at only 
$1,102,989,677, nearly four times its face 
value. But the dead Standard Oil " company " 
can regard its dissolution with considerable 
equanimity when it reflects, in the language of 
the report, that the " total earnings of the 
Standard Oil companies equal over 18 times 
the dividend requirements." 

If this is President Wilson's idea of the way 
business has become good he is certainly right ; 



SPORT OF TRUST BUSTING 121 

business has never been better for the Standard 
Oil gentlemen. 

Soon afterward the Supreme Court de- 
stroyed in the same way, after seven years of 
contest, the great American Tobacco Trust 
and in seven months the value of the securities 
of this horrible thing had increased nearly 
$100,000,000, and the monster was still doing 
profitable business at the old stand. 

In 1904 the country was made happy by the 
famous decision in the Northern Securities case, 
which was brought to prevent Mr. James J. 
Hill from combining the Northern Pacific and 
Great Northern railroads. The Supreme 
Court in severest terms condemned this com- 
bination and upheld the validity of the Sher- 
man act, prohibiting all such combinations in 
restraint of trade. But the combination en- 
dured, nevertheless, and endures to this day. 
Mr. Hill merely opened a new set of books and 
juggled a little with names and proceeded with 
his plans exactly as before. 

Four years ago the government undertook to 
destroy the great Harvester Trust. The Har- 
vester Trust, names and forms being changed a 
little, thrives as before and continues to gouge 
the farmers of $140 for a binder worth $40. 



122 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

The government has investigated, denounced, 
and prosecuted the United States Steel Cor- 
poration, the overshadowing Steel Trust. The 
Steel Trust continues to pursue its serene way, 
declaring dividends and killing men. 

The government has prosecuted the Shoe 
Machinery Trust. The Shoe Machinery Trust 
continues to accumulate its enormous profits 
as before. 

The government has prosecuted and con- 
demned the Powder Trust. The Powder Trust 
continues as of old to gouge the very govern- 
ment that prosecuted it. 

The government has prosecuted the Lumber 
Trust. The Lumber Trust continues to do the 
very things for which nineteen of its members 
were once indicted. 

In four years, while the cost of living uni- 
formly rose, the trusts of this country added 
Two Billion Dollars to their capitalization, 
most of the addition being water as pure and 
limpid as ever burst from any spring. On all 
this added capitalization the public is required 
to furnish the interest and dividends. Yet 
some persons profess wonder as to why the cost 
of living increases. 

All the time these changes were taking place 
the Sherman Anti-Trust law irradiated the 



SPORT OF TRUST BUSTING 123 

statutes and doctors of the body politic like 
Mr. Wilson continued to talk pleasantly about 
enforcing that law. 

The true nature of the high finance that was 
behind all Trust operations can be gathered 
easily from the report of the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission on the financiering of the 
New Haven. 

The Commission found after an exhaustive 
examination that the railroad had been looted 
of about $90,000,000 by the gentlemen in con- 
trol of the property. Many of the acts cited 
were grossly illegal and others were criminal. 
From time to time while the looting was going 
on the attention of the government was called 
in magazine articles and otherwise to the pirates 
and their work, but government declined to 
interfere until the pirate band had taken every- 
thing in sight and abandoned the old ship. 
Whereupon the country is allowed to know that 
nothing had been left that wasn't spiked down. 

The report of the Commission contains these 
highly instructive passages : 

Marked features and significant incidents in the 
loose, extravagant, and improvident administration 
of the finances of the New Haven as shown in this 
investigation are the Boston & Maine despoilment; 
the inequity of the Westchester acquisition; the 
double price paid for the Rhode Island trolleys; 



124 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

the recklessness in the purchase of Connecticut and 
Massachusetts trolleys at prices exorbitantly in ex- 
cess of their market value; the unwarranted ex- 
penditure of large amounts in " educating public 
opinion " ; the disposition, without knowledge of 
the directors of hundreds of thousands of dollars 
for influencing public sentiment; the habitual pay- 
ment of unitemized vouchers without any clear 
specification of details; the confusing inter-rela- 
tion of the principal company and its subsidiaries 
and consequent complication of accounts; the prac- 
tice of financial legerdemain in issuing large blocks 
of New Haven stocks for notes of the New Eng- 
land Navigation Company, and manipulating these 
securities back and forth; fictitious sales of New 
Haven stock to friendly parties with the design 
of boosting the stock and unloading on the public 
at the higher " market price " ; the unlawful di- 
version of corporate funds to political organiza- 
tions; the scattering of retainers to attorneys of 
five states, who rendered no itemized bills for serv- 
ices and who conducted no litigation to which the 
railroad was a party. 

Extensive use of a paid lobby in the matters as 
to which the directors claim to have no informa- 
tion, is another " significant incident," as are " the 
attempt to control utterances of the press by sub- 
sidizing reporters; payment of money and the 
profligate issue of free passes to legislators and 
their friends; the investment of $400,000 in se- 
curities of a New England newspaper; the regular 
employment of political bosses in Rhode Island and 
other states, not for them to perform any service, 
but to prevent them, as Mr. Mellen expresses it, 
from ' becoming active on the other side ' ; the re- 



SPORT OF TRUST BUSTING 1&5 

tention of John L. Billard, of more than $2,700,- 
000 in a transaction in which he represented the 
New Haven and into which he invested not a dol- 
lar; the inability of Oakleigh Thorne to accept for 
$1,032,000 of the funds of the New Haven en- 
trusted to him in carrying out the Westchester 
proposition; the story of Mr. Mellen as to the dis- 
tribution of $1,200,000 for corrupt purposes in 
bringing about amendments of the Westchester and 
Portchester franchises; the domination of all the 
affairs of this railroad by Mr. Morgan and Mr. 
Mellen and the absolute subordination of other 
members of the board of directors to the will of 
these two; the unwarranted increase of the New 
Haven liabilities from $93,000,000 in 1903 to 
$417,000,000 in 1913; the increase in floating 
notes from nothing in 1903 to approximately $40,- 
000,000 in 1913; the indefensible standard of busi- 
ness ethics and the absence of financial acumen 
displayed by eminent financiers in directing the 
destinies of this railroad in an attempt to estab- 
lish a monopoly of the transportation of New Eng- 
land. A combination of all these has resulted in 
the present deplorable situation in which the af- 
fairs of this railroad are involved." 

The report, says the press despatch describ- 
ing it, told of millions used like stage money, 
of corporations as pawns in a monster game 
with all New England's transportation as a 
prize, which led the New Haven in the ten years 
just past from the height of prosperity to the 
point where a dividend has been passed, where 



126 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

a dissolution suit is threatening and where crim- 
inal indictments of many of the directors who 
figured in its deals are at least a possibility. 

It speaks of criminal maladministration and 
negligence, asserts with positiveness that the di- 
rectors knew they were perfecting an illegal com- 
bination, and says that the dream of a transporta- 
tion monopoly was unsound and mischievous. 

The New Haven, the commission says, employed 
dummy directors, manipulated accounts., used ques- 
tionable methods in increasing its own stock, paid 
the dividends of subsidiaries to make a showing 
and used many other devices to deceive the stock- 
holders and the public. It dipped into politics, 
was a factor in " invisible government/' made 
large campaign contributions to the two dominant 
political parties, bought officials and tried to dis- 
tort public opinion. All this it did, the commis- 
sions says, " to carry out a scheme of private trans- 
portation monopoly imperial in its scope." 

In its investigation the commission found the 
New Haven had SS6 subsidiary corporations, many 
of which served no purpose except an " evil one." 

The report, pointing out that on the New Haven 
board were representatives of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad, the New York Central, the United States 
Steel Corporation, the Standard Oil Company, the 
Pullman company and many other interests, says 
that interlocking directorates of this sort cannot be 
" too strongly condemned." 

So this is the way the highest financiers in 
the country and the most famous conducted 
the New Haven to its ruin. 



SPORT OF TRUST BUSTING 127 

Three facts are now to be considered very 
soberly by every citizen in the light of this 
revelation. 

First, former President Mellen testified on 
the witness stand that for the purposes of 
" controlling public opinion " the New Haven 
spent less than other important railroads. So 
the true source of the newspaper support of 
the railroad cause is quite clearly revealed. 
We can see now why so many journals clamored 
for the 5 per cent, increase in freight rates. 
Also the real reason why the railroads needed 
that increase. 

Second, there is no essential difference be- 
tween the manner in which this railroad was 
scooped inside out and the manner in which the 
same process has been and is being carried on in 
other railroads. And for all of these amuse- 
ments the public must assuredly pay, since the 
roads are left loaded with a huge capitalization 
and debt on which the public must dig up the 
dividends and interest. 

Third, this process is very apparent in the 
case of the New Haven, where to meet the enor- 
mous charges caused by the looting rates have 
already been advanced, tickets that formerly 
sold for $4.65 being now $5, with other rates in 
proportion. 



128 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

The substance of the proposition therefore is 
revealed. We pay increased rates that the gen- 
tlemen on the inside of these enterprises may 
have more yachts, more art galleries, more 
automobiles and more monkey dinners. This is 
the process we endorse when we vote for either 
of the old parties since both equally support it. 

Of course, if we vote for what we get we 
ought not to complain when we get it. 



CHAPTER VI 
FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 

For all these things the remedy is in the 
hands of labor, and the curious fact is that la- 
bor can not only put an end to its own troubles 
by doing a very simple thing, but it can also 
put an end at the same time to that menacing 
situation for the whole country caused by the 
accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, 
a trouble that appealed so movingly to the au- 
thor of " The New Freedom " so long as he 
was merely a candidate and not a President. 

The way labor could do this is by uniting. 

Now an impartial observer might think this 
a thing so obvious that it is silly to talk about 
it. 

The Parasites that live upon labor and de- 
clare great dividends out of labor's poorly paid 
toll — they do not need to be encouraged to 
unite. They are firmly united already. 

No one needs to suggest to the gentlemen 

that are riding upon your backs that their in- 

129 



130 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

terests are identical. They know that any- 
way. 

Nobody ever heard of rival organizations of 
the exploiters getting in one another's way; it 
is only the exploited that do that. 

The riders are harmonious ; it is the ridden 
that quarrel and are divided. 

When the railroads are trying to put over a 
fraudulent increase of freight rates, notice how 
absolutely they stand together. One works for 
the others and all work for one in a way that 
is beautiful to behold. Or when they are try- 
ing to prevent their employees from getting an 
increase of wages, what harmony prevails ! Or 
observe how carefully they guard one another's 
interests in the matter of blacklisting. Any 
man anywhere that is found to be an agitator 
or active in forming labor unions or prominent 
in a strike, is quickly known by name to every 
railroad in the country and cannot get work 
from any of them. 

So late as 1903, for instance, the men that 
took any prominent or active part in the great 
railroad strike of 1894 were blacklisted and 
unable to get employment on any railroad in 
the country. They had worked against the in- 
terest of the railroad combination and must be 
punished and made an example of. 



EOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 131 

In the same way, any man that attacks or- 
ganized wealth anywhere is boycotted every- 
where. If he offends the banks in Oshkosh he 
offends them also in Spokane and Baraboo. 

Everywhere Greed preserves an unbroken 
front. It is only Need that stops to quarrel 
about trifles and while it quarrels Greed picks 
its other pocket also. 

Suppose there was a fort held by five hundred 
men and five thousand men were trying to cap- 
ture it. And suppose that every day the be- 
sieging army sent fifty men to make a charge 
against the fort. How long do you suppose 
the besiegers would be in capturing that posi- 
tion? 

If the whole five thousand went in one united 
body they could take the place without half 
trying. So long as they think more about 
bickering among themselves than they think 
about assaulting the common enemy, the enemy, 
though few in numbers, will win. So long as 
the besiegers advance in detachments they 
might as well give up and go home. 

Two or three years ago there was a strike 
among the shop men of what is called the Har- 
riman system of railroads, the Union Pacific, 
Southern Pacific, Illinois Central and some 
others. 



13£ DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

It is certain that the railroad managers ex- 
pected the strike and welcomed, if they did not 
secretly instigate, it. They desired a chance 
to crush union labor and were fully prepared 
to do so. For weeks before the strike was ac- 
tually declared, work trains manned by union 
men were engaged in hauling lumber for shacks 
and stockades to house strike-breakers and 
scabs. Union carpenters were engaged in 
erecting such shacks and stockades. When the 
strike was declared union engineers, union fire- 
men, union conductors and union brakemen 
carried to the shop towns thousands of strike- 
breakers and union switchmen helped to operate 
the trains that bore these enemies of theirs. 
Not willingly, any of them, of course; they 
knew what was on foot and knew the use that 
was being made of them to defeat their brother 
workers. But they were helpless. They be- 
longed to separate unions. Each union had 
made a separate contract for itself with a sep- 
arate date of expiration and this contract with- 
held it from giving to another union any effec- 
tive support. 

If the engineers could have struck with the 
shopmen, if the firemen could have refused to 
haul strike-breakers, the strike would have been 
won in twenty-four hours or less. But because 



FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 133 

of the division into separate unions, the rest of 
the army of labor was obliged not merely to 
stand by and see their brothers beaten but actu- 
ally to assist in beating them. 

In other words, it was the old story of ad- 
vancing in detachments and being defeated in 
detail. 

The same illustration was repeated in the case 
of the strike of the pressmen and stereotypers 
in Chicago in the spring of 1912. 

Here was one of the greatest battles that 
labor ever fought and only prevented from 
being one of labor's greatest victories by the 
failure of the compositors to join hands with 
their fellow workers. With the assistance of 
the compositors the strikers would have been 
invincible and could have dictated their own 
terms. But the compositors were helpless, 
being tied up with a separate contract made 
with their separate union and having a long 
term to run. They were obliged to stand by 
and help to issue the newspapers that were de- 
feating and defrauding the workers. 

Such things have been repeated so often that 
they are perfectly (and painfully) familiar to 
every person that has observed the course of 
the labor struggle in America. If there is a 
strike of miners, the engineers in that mine con- 



134 DOING TJS GOOD AND PLENTY 

tinue to hoist scab miners in and out ; the en- 
gineers 9 union has a separate contract. If 
there is a strike in a factory, the machinists 
cannot come out ; they have a separate contract. 
When it expires the employers exact some con- 
cession, and then if the machinists strike the 
operatives in that factory cannot join them, 
because in the meantime they, too, have made 
a separate contract. The two together could 
win justice and better conditions ; fighting sep- 
arately they are defeated separately, and with 
ease. 

The employers clearly perceive this situa- 
tion if the workers do not, and the employers 
bend every energy to keep the workers from 
uniting. 

An infinite variety of devices are used to this 
end, some of them exceedingly ingenious. If 
there is a labor leader anywhere that cannot see 
the advantages of industrial over craft organi- 
zation (that is, all railroad men in one union, 
all men in the printing trade in one union, and 
so forth) such a leader is singled out for subtle 
honors and attentions. He may be as honest 
as the day is long and may never suspect the 
reason for the distinctions that are heaped 
upon him, but the flattery will affect him, never- 
theless. In spite of all reason and evidence, 



FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 135 

he will think that he has the kind regard of the 
employers because of his superior merit and 
character, and there is no wisdom after that 
able to keep him from being influenced by the 
suggestions he hears. 

Similarly, any man that stands for a genuine 
union of the forces of labor must expect noth- 
ing but ridicule and every form of misrepre- 
sentation from the journals controlled in the 
interest of the employers. He must also ex- 
pect that the true origin of this abuse will never 
be recognized and he will suffer accordingly in 
the estimation of his own class and his own 
people. 

But to keep the workers divided on the po- 
litical field is equally important to the employ- 
ers and brings forth their most adroit schemes. 
They know perfectly well that the workers con- 
stitute the vast majority of the voters and that 
accordingly if the workers were ever to unite 
at the ballot box the present supremacy of the 
employing class would vanish instantly. The 
constant object of the employers, therefore, is 
to keep the workers divided, and to that end 
they bring out at every election some false issue 
by which the attention of the workers may be 
diverted from their own wrongs and be fixed 
upon something else. 



136 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

This is the only thing that has kept the old 
Republican and Democratic parties alive so 
many years after there has ceased to be any 
difference between them. 

Millions of workingmen vote the Republican 
ticket every year and other millions vote the 
Democratic, and they might far better not vote 
at all. No human being is ingenious enough 
to mention a single advantage that any work- 
ingman has had from either the Republican or 
the Democratic administrations. When work- 
ingmen vote the Republican or the Democratic 
ticket they are voting for the employing class. 
They might as easily vote for themselves, if 
they would, but the great majority continue to 
vote for their employers. The spectacle is one 
of the strangest and most unreasonable that 
can be imagined, but every year it is repeated, 
to the great satisfaction of the employing class 
and the increase of its profits. 

One year it is the tariff question that is re- 
lied upon to do this. We have had more than 
thirty years of tariff discussion and sometimes 
we have had a high tariff and sometimes a low 
tariff, but all the time the workers continued to 
create all the wealth of the country and to get 
very little of the wealth they created. All the 
time, too, this great change has gone forward 



FOE OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 137 

unchecked under which there is a constant in- 
crease in the cost of living but no correspond- 
ing increase in wages and salaries ; under which, 
therefore, the workers have continued to grow 
poorer and poorer and the chances of their chil- 
dren to grow less. 

When it seems unlikely that the tariff can 
arouse the interest necessary to keep the work- 
ers from thinking about their plight, there is 
always something else that will do it. Some- 
times it is reform; sometimes it is free silver 
coinage ; sometimes it is a personal contest be- 
tween two well-known men, when the campaign 
takes on the aspect of a prize fight and the 
sporting instincts of the people are appealed 
to. One of the most effective men for this pur- 
pose is Theodore Roosevelt. He has a good 
line of spectacular stunts and can be depended 
upon to get into the lime light every day with 
some new device. This keeps the people guess- 
ing and centers their minds on Roosevelt in- 
stead of on themselves, the result being that 
either the Republicans or the Democrats get 
control of the government, and so far as the 
employing class and the exploiters are con- 
cerned, one is as good as the other. 

No matter which is in power, the old condi- 
tion continues under which the workers create 



138 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

all the wealth of the country and get very little 
of what they create and the cost of living con- 
tinues to increase, but there is no correspond- 
ing increase of wages and salaries. 

Every interest of the working class and of 
the nation, every interest material, intellectual 
or any other, demands that this shall be changed 
and at once. If nothing else were involved 
but the one great matter of education, even 
that ought to be sufficient to move the worker 
as much as it moves every intelligent observer 
aware of the present appalling facts in regard 
to our public schools. 

In other words, even if the worker would not 
desire for his own sake to effect a radical 
change, he ought to think how directly all this 
comes home to his children. 

At the last meeting of the National Educa- 
tional Association the startling fact was 
brought out that the children of the masses of 
this country are practically uneducated and 
without a chance of securing an education. It 
is actually true that 75 per cent, of the chil- 
dren in our public schools drop out at the close 
of the elementary courses or before. Fewer 
than 7 per cent, complete the high school grade. 

That is to say, in the United States only the 
children of the rich and the well-to-do are re- 



FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 139 

ceiving any kind of education worth the name. 
The children of the poor and of the workers 
are condemned at the start to a state of ig- 
norance. 

Thus, in spite of ourselves, we have already 
established one aristocracy, the aristocracy of 
knowledge. 

This condition is not merely perilous to the 
country but it will inevitably prove fatal to its 
progress and ideals. 

Moreover, it is absolutely unnecessary. 
There is no possible reason why knowledge 
should be monopolized. Knowledge should be 
just as much the possession of the poorest as 
of the richest. The child of the worker should 
have as much opportunity for culture and 
higher education as the child of the millionaire. 

More than that, if we consider the interests 
of society at large and of the future of the race, 
that the child of the worker should have the 
utmost of education is far more important. 
Under the existing state of facts the loss to so- 
ciety is incalculable and staggering. Knowl- 
edge is power, we continue to parrot, and yet 
we deprive ninety per cent, of the next genera- 
tion of all such power. 

Yet such results must always be expected of 
a government chosen in the sole interests of the 



140 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

exploiting class and composed of its members 
and representatives. All hope of betterment 
from government so constituted is very idle. 
If legislators chosen by and for the exploiting 
class could be induced to accept even the slight- 
est improvement it would be in the nature of 
only a benevolence, condescendingly conferred 
and like all benevolences, certain to be futile. 
The complete education of the children of the 
masses is of no concern to the gentlemen that 
constitute the parasitical kind of government 
that at present we endure. They do not see 
that there is any necessity for widespread and 
advanced education. To a great many of them 
their material interests are all the other way. 
They do not believe in much education for the 
children of the working class because they think 
education would spread discontent among them 
and make them dissatisfied with their lot. They 
will say so if you ask them frankly. Their 
interest is that there shall be a large body of 
workingmen content and docile and willing to 
accept prevailing conditions, and therefore these 
employers are on sufficient grounds opposed to 
" too much education " for all children except 
their own. 

Inevitably they look at the matter from the 
viewpoint of their own interest and always will. 



FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 141 

Consequently so long as government is con- 
ducted by and for the employing class, there 
will never be any change in the condition under 
which the children of the workers are con- 
demned to ignorance any more than there will 
be in that other condition under which the cost 
of living steadily increases but without a cor- 
responding increase in wages. 

What is incumbent upon workers therefore 
is that they shall insist upon having a govern- 
ment truly representative of themselves and 
their class, being by far the largest part of the 
population. The only way they can get that 
kind of a government is by electing men of their 
own class to every office. The fiction has been 
carefully nursed by the Parasites that work- 
ingmen, being of inferior intellect, are incapa- 
ble of discharging the duties of government. 
It is hardly necessary to dwell long on this old 
fake. It is part of the game by which the 
working class is kept from its just share of 
power. The snobbish assumption is that be- 
cause a man works with his hands he is there- 
fore unable to think with his brain. This is, of 
course, merely preposterous. The best think- 
ers in this country to-day are among those 
classed as workingmen. You can go into any 
average labor union and hear a higher order 



142 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

of debate and a more intelligent conduct of af- 
fairs than you will find in the national House of 
Representatives, and everybody that has had 
the chance for comparison knows that this is 
perfectly true. 

But anyway, what is demanded for the se- 
curity of the country as well as for the future 
of the worker and his children is that all work- 
ers should unite in the determination that since 
this country is a Republic and Democracy is 
the eternal law of truth and since the working 
class constitute the vast majority of the popu- 
lation the working class united will have an 
ever increasing share in the country's govern- 
ment. 

It is a very strange fact that the workers of 
America seem to be the only workers in the 
world that have not yet begun to awaken to 
the basic facts of the conditions that surround 
and threaten them. Elsewhere we see the 
workers uniting and beginning to demand their 
own. Only in the United States do they seem 
contented to keep on voting for the employers 
instead of for themselves, and using their great 
power to make their condition worse instead of 
better. 

Every other nation that has a parliamentary 
form of government has in it many representa- 



FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 143 

tives of the working class. At present the 
government of the United States does not con- 
tain one. 

Easily 70 per cent, of the population of this 
country belongs to the working class. In the 
National House of Representatives sit 435 
members. If that body were truly representa- 
tive, 304 of its members would be of the work- 
ing class. Instead of this, we never have more 
than four or five members that by any stretch- 
ing of imagination can be said to have ever 
belonged to the working class and except for 
a single Congress not one that was chosen dis- 
tinctively to represent that vast majority of 
the population; 

This is the strangest fact in our national lif e> 
and after one has contemplated it for a time, 
all wonder vanishes that in legislation and the 
management of the government labor is con- 
tinually the victim of the tricks and rotten de- 
vices a few of which have been instanced in a 
foregoing chapter. Likewise no one need 
longer be astonished to learn that the govern- 
ment is conducted in the interest of the ex- 
ploiters, nor that conditions prevail here at 
which every intelligent foreign visitor gasps in 
astonishment; for here is the fact that makes 
all these things easy. 



144 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

The exploiters, constituting 1 per cent, of 
the population, elect 99 per cent, of the national 
legislators. The workers, constituting 70 per 
cent, of the population, elect nobody at all. 
What would you naturally expect under such 
conditions? The legislators naturally work 
for those that put them into office. A man 
elected by the exploiting class and chosen from 
its ranks can no more represent labor or the 
masses than the King of Siam can represent the 
State of Iowa. 

This was always true, but it is now truer 
than ever, and infinitely more important, as 
you will see at once if you will stop to reflect 
on the great changes that have occurred in the 
nature of public problems in the last twenty 
years. 

Here is something you never see discussed in 
your newspaper and yet it is the most signifi- 
cant fact of the times. It is literally true that 
nine in ten of the topics now debated in Con- 
gress are not of the least importance to this 
nation. Nine-tenths of the time of Congress 
is frittered away. The eminent legislators 
might much better be employed in making mud 
pies or tatting. Nothing is of any real im- 
portance to this nation except the one question 
whether we are longer to continue the process 



FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 145 

under which the cost of living increases and in- 
creases but there is no corresponding increase 
of wages, and that question you never hear 
mentioned in Congress. 

Yet if that process shall continue much 
longer, we shall, in effect, have no nation worth 
bothering about. For two things will have 
happened. First, the great Groups of capi- 
talists that at present have absorbed the control 
of almost half of the nation's wealth will have 
absorbed the rest of it so that all others will 
be merely the hired men of these, subject to a 
power the most colossal and irresponsible that 
ever existed on this earth. Second, the stand- 
ard of living among the workers, now steadily 
declining under the present system, will have 
reached a level that no thoughtful man can con- 
template without the gravest alarm. 

For the simple fact is that the strength of 
any nation lies solely in the physical welfare 
of its producers, the working class. There is 
not a particle of national strength nor public 
advantage in the accumulation of much money 
in the hands of any individual. Physical, men- 
tal and moral strength springs exclusively from 
the masses and does not exist where the masses 
are ill-fed and hopeless. For a nation to have 
enormous wealth in the possession of a few 



146 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

means not one thing that is good and every- 
thing that is ruinous. 

What is at hand for this nation, therefore, is 
obvious when we contemplate the fact that just 
as the masses grow poorer the few that are the 
beneficiaries of the present system grow richer. 

While for the masses the cost of living al- 
ways increases and there is no corresponding 
increase in wages, this process is a pump that 
gathers the wealth of the land into the coffers 
of the men constituting the Two Groups, al- 
ready representing by far the greatest private 
fortunes ever possessed in this world. 

Also the greatest power. 

It is obviously true, therefore, as I said in 
the beginning of this chapter, that the life of 
the nation lies in the hands of the working class, 
and the workers can solve all these problems 
and remove all these perils if they will. 

The one thing needful is that they should 
unite and begin to vote for themselves instead 
of voting for the Parasites. 

If the country were in danger from a more 
obvious foe they would not hesitate. Suppose 
some other nation were to land troops upon our 
soil practically the whole working class would 
rally to the defense of our country. It would 
do so instinctively and without counting the 



FOR OURSELVES OR FOR THE ENEMY? 147 

cost. Workers in every corner of the country 
would hasten to the recruiting offices to offer 
their lives, if need be, for the national defense. 
They would leave their homes and their fami- 
lies for this exalted purpose and feel that in 
so doing they were but making a sacrifice abso- 
lutely demanded by their duty as citizens. 
Even if the outcome of the war was from the 
beginning a certainty and they knew that their 
country was really in no danger of destruction, 
they would still be willing to make for it so 
great a sacrifice. 

Every man that observed the rush to enlist 
at the time of the Spanish- American war knows 
how true this is. 

But here is the country threatened by an 
enemy far worse than any that could possibly 
land a hostile force upon our shores. Here is 
a prospect of destruction far greater than 
could be wrought with cannon or an enemy's 
fleet. Not only is the national welfare and 
safety menaced but the future of the worker 
and of his children. As in the case of the 
other kind of war, the one source of defenders 
is in the working class. The sacrifice required 
is not of lives but simply and only this, that 
the workers should lay aside every difference 
that now divides them and ceasing to vote for 



148 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

the Parasites that exploit them begin to vote 
for themselves, to organize and act for them- 
selves. 

And on this chance hangs the future for this 
country. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS AND 
WHAT IT MEANS IN THE WORLD 

Under the present form of industry, which 
we call the Capitalist System, let us say that a 
man makes daily in a factory the equivalent 
of four pairs of shoes. He gets paid in wages 
$2. But the shoes are worth $8 in the factory. 
The consumer that finally buys and wears them 
will probably have to pay $4 or $5 a pair for 
them. But we need not go so far as that. 

The worker with his $2 in wages can buy 
back and consume only $2 worth of commodi- 
ties. That leaves $6 worth of wealth in the 
form of shoes, hats, stoves or whatever the 
product may be, for the capitalist, the owner of 
the factory. The capitalist deducts the cost 
of his raw material, rent and other expenses 
and still has left a profit in the form of prod- 
uct. The amount of this profit varies in dif- 
ferent industries, but its existence must be as- 
sured, under the present system, if the enter- 

149 



150 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

prise is to continue; for our entire industrial 
organization as it is constituted to-day is based 
upon the assurance of profit. 

But the owner of the factory has only one 
pair of feet, one head and in numbers he is com- 
paratively few. He has only one body to 
clothe, one stomach to feed. With his best 
efforts he is unable, as an individual or as a 
class, to consume all the wealth that is created 
for him by other men's labor. Labor would be 
able to consume its own product, but is not al- 
lowed to because the wages of labor permit it 
to buy back only a fraction. 

So we have what is known to economists as 
the Unconsumed Surplus. Every year all the 
countries of the world that are by some mistake 
called " civilized," produce in various forms 
of wealth more than they consume. 

To get rid of this unconsumed surplus is the 
problem of industry to-day. 

There would be one sensible, obvious and 
reasonable method of getting rid of it, namely 
to pay the workers that have produced it 
enough in wages and salaries to enable them to 
buy back their own product, in other words to 
increase the purchasing power of the working 
class. But the masters of industry of the coun- 
try, the " managerial brains " by whose wis- 



THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS 151 

dom we set so much store, appear never to have 
thought of so simple a solution as that. 

So manufacturers and merchants continue 
their present futile efforts to get rid of their 
surplus stocks by " making business better." 
That is, they attempt, by one childish device 
after another, to compel the small percentage 
of the population that has purchasing power to 
buy things that they do not need. 

To this worthy end are employed a vast 
army of advertising experts and salesmanship 
specialists. An appalling sum of human effort 
and intelligence is perverted from legitimate 
channels of activity and is prostituted to the 
service of designing and forcing upon the mar- 
ket continual changes in " fashion." 

Though no form of human product escapes 
it the most obvious manifestation, perhaps, of 
this species of insanity is apparent in woman's 
wearing apparel, for the reason that the idle 
rich woman has more per capita spending power 
than any other class and that her desires have 
not evolved beyond the primitive demands sup- 
plied by endless variations in the decking of her 
own person. 

We have therefore one ridiculous fashion in 
April, another in May. One monstrous ab- 
surdity assaults our vision in January, another 



152 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

in February. We no sooner accustom our eyes 
to womankind tied in around the ankles than 
they suddenly balloon out at the base. We 
train ourselves to regard with philosophical 
equanimity hats perched at a precarious angle 
on the top of the head when suddenly, as with 
a flail, all high hats are swept from the 
landscape and feminine headgear is once 
more jammed bucket-wise over forehead and 
eyes. 

Season after season the unsophisticated pub- 
lic is treated to the same delighted announce- 
ments of the fashion mongers that whereas last 
year collars were high, this year they will be 
low, that last season's skirts were wide at the 
bottom, but this year they must be wide at the 
top. The fashion venders, the commercial in- 
siders, bear these tidings without shock. Nat- 
urally. What else would you expect? 

Blame the folly of womankind? That is the 
easy and superficial thing to do. Meanwhile 
just how strong-minded must an individual 
woman needs be to dress in one fashion while 
her world dresses in another? Are you not 
yourself ready to ridicule and call " queer " the 
slightest deviation from the prevailing stand- 
ard? If you think the responsibility for the 
silliness of fashion lies in the vanity of woman, 



THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS 153 

suppose, Mr. Superior-minded Philosopher, you 
try arraying yourself this season in that per- 
fectly good straw hat and pair of pointed 
shoes that you set away a few years ago. Or 
why not bring out that bicycle which you once 
found both useful and enjoyable and which is 
still practically as serviceable as ever? 

The responsibility lies not in the folly of in- 
dividual woman or man. The responsibility 
lies in a social and industrial system which is 
deliberately designed to compel its members to 
buy things that they do not need. If they did 
not do this our whole industrial and commercial 
organization, as at present constituted, would 
fall to the ground with a crash. Against this 
system the individual is helpless. 

Under the present organization of Society a 
vast majority of the population is unable to 
buy more than the barest necessities of life. 
Great masses are unable to buy even these. If 
the small minority that possesses purchasing 
power was not practically forced to buy more 
than it really wanted or needed, our whole pres- 
ent system of industry would fail. And in 
spite of what may be called the desperate ef- 
forts of manufacturers and merchants and their 
hired talent to compel ever quicker and more 
reckless changes of fashion signs are not want- 



154 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

ing to indicate that this crash nevertheless can 
not much longer be averted. 

It is estimated that last year two billion dol- 
lars was expended in the United States on ad- 
vertising and " salesmanship " and still is heard 
from Maine to California a general complaint 
that Business is Bad. 

The President assures the nation that this 
condition is but Psychological. Glowing Crop 
Reports are circulated as evidence of a well fed 
populace. Old party political orators find as- 
surance of national prosperity in the annual 
report of the Department of Commerce, which 
shows American Exports exceeding Imports by 
$653,000,000. 

But all the time the merchant looks with 
dispirited eyes upon his shelves of goods which 
will not sell. The commercial traveller finds 
it hard to maintain that light assurance and 
optimism, which salesmanship experts assure 
him is the successful commercial manner, in the 
face of ever lighter order books and ever mount- 
ing household expenditures. The eyes of the 
Unemployed leap across the Crop Reports to 
scan with eager ferocity the Help Wanted col- 
umn. And as mayhap one of this gaunt army 
catches the light assurance of the well-fed that 
with Exports exceeding Imports all is neces- 



THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS 155 

sarily well with us, perhaps at least a glimmer 
flits across his confused and tired mind of that 
profound though seldom regarded economic 
fact, that over-Exportation abroad indicates 
under-consumption at home. 

The great Siegel dry goods enterprises failed 
in March, the Claflin chain of stores went to the 
wall in June. In every large city in this coun- 
try to-day are closed stores and factories with 
goods on their shelves and signs on their front 
doors reading " Bankrupt Stock " or " Re- 
ceiver's Sale." 

And in every city and village in this country 
to-day human beings are walking the streets 
looking for work and destitute of the barest 
physical necessities of life. Necessities which 
lie stacked up on counters and in warehouses, 
which their labor has produced and which the 
insane Capitalist or Profit system does not al- 
low them to use. 

This condition of industry in which factories 
shut down, stores close and men are laid off is 
called variously a slump, a business depression, 
hard times. What it really means is that men 
must walk the streets and beg for work because 
they have worked too much. They and their 
families must do without the barest necessities 
because they have produced too much. 



156 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

All the wheels of industry must slow down 
until the Unconsumed Surplus is worked off. 
Sometimes even with all the resourcefulness of 
high salaried managerial skill this can not be 
accomplished at home. Then the capitalist 
owners of industry begin to look abroad for a 
foreign market for their goods and foreign in- 
vestments for their surplus capital. For the 
high purpose of finding a dumping ground 
abroad for a surplus domestic product, capi- 
talists force wars. Then under the guise of 
" Patriotism " the workers of one country are 
fooled into going to the front in defense of their 
Nation's honor. There they murder in battle 
the workers of another country and help to de- 
stroy some of the wealth that they have pro- 
duced and for lack of which their families are 
suffering at home. Also they help to send in- 
terest rates up for the gentlemen whose patri- 
otic services in the nation's honor consist in 
staying at home and financing these undertak- 
ings. 

Meanwhile just in the name of common sense 
how does the whole thing strike you? 

You pinch and scrimp and save, Madam 
House-wife and Mother. You force your weary 
eyes to remain open a little longer at night in 
order to put another patch on the little fellow's 



THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS 157 

trousers. And your reward for that will be 
to learn at the end of the season that your 
boy's father has been laid off from work be- 
cause the manufacturer for whom he toils has 
hundreds of dozens of pairs of unsold trousers 
left over on his shelves. You save and scrimp 
and pinch, you cherish eggless recipes and learn 
to feed your family on six eggs a week and your 
reward for that is to read one day the state- 
ment of Dr. M. E. Pennington, Chief of the 
Food Research Laboratory of the Department 
of Agriculture, that $50,000,000 worth of eggs 
in this country never reach the consumer at all 
but are sent to the garbage dump and de- 
stroyed. 

In the very face of the most palpable and 
desperate efforts of our owners of industry to 
work off their surplus product we are cursed 
in this country with a breed of shallow minded 
reformers who assume that the remedy for all 
our economic and industrial ills is to create 
more product. Back to the Land is a popular 
slogan with these profound thinkers. Let us 
raise two hogs where but one was raised before. 
Or let us put up more dwellings that all may 
be well housed. 

Meanwhile miles of bill boarding beseech the 
prosperous in pocket to buy Our Particular 



158 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

Brand of bacon. And rows of good houses and 
apartments stand vacant while the poor pack 
their tenements a little closer. Also rents are 
no lower and the price of bacon is shoved a 
notch higher to cover the cost of our latest 
" advertising campaign." 

But the shallow minded reformer apparently 
uses neither his eyes nor his reasoning faculties. 
To him appears no flaw in the argument that 
if 96 per cent, of our population are ragged, 
underfed and ill housed for lack of enough pro- 
duction it should be necessary to expend two 
billion dollars annually in the insane devices of 
advertising in order to get rid of a surplus 
product. 

He never once questions the reasonableness of 
an arrangement by which it is necessary to em- 
ploy a vast army of shop-keepers, market men, 
clerks, sales persons, agents, solicitors, adver- 
tising staffs and selling experts to supplicate 
possible purchasers to buy in a country in which 
the vast majority of the population are lacking 
the barest physical necessities. 

When the country was young and the wilder- 
ness to be conquered men often worked from 
sunrise to sunset to produce for themselves and 
their families the things that they needed. To- 
day the great masses of men and women toil 



THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS 159 

long hours to produce more commodities for 
those that do not need them because they al- 
ready have too much. 

Between those that do need the wealth and 
the wealth that they need is interposed the Cap- 
italist or Profit System. They are not allowed 
to consume the product of labor except by pay- 
ing a profit to the owners of labor. 

The basic principle of Capitalism is that 
money breeds money. If an owner invests in 
the stock of an industry $100 this year he ex- 
pects to take out of that industry $105 next 
year. If he does not get his increase the en- 
terprise is called a failure. But money does 
not breed money, wealth does not breed wealth, 
except out of human toil. Mr. Rockefeller 
might stack up a pile of dollars as high as the 
Woolworth building and they would not turn 
one wheel or stoke one fire. He might cover 
his vast acres with stocks and bonds and they 
would not bring out of the earth one gallon of 
oil. 

It is only through human toil that the re- 
sources of earth are delivered up to swell the 
fortunes of the owning class. For every dollar 
of wealth an owner or investor gets that he has 
not earned some toiler has earned a dollar that 
he did not get. 



160 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

And the dollar that he earned and did not 
get will be added to the already staggering 
hoards of the Unconsumed Surplus of the Rock- 
efellers, Astors and Morgans. There all the 
devices of Newport villas, steam yachts and 
boarded up Fifth Avenue mansions will not en- 
able these men and their heirs to squander all of 
their surplus product upon themselves. It will 
therefore have to be reinvested and will once 
again constitute an additional demand for profit 
out of the sweat and blood of labor. 

A favorite defence of capitalists used to be 
that " they give employment to labor." Mrs. 
Grabitall's $75,000 dinner dance was justified 
on the plea that so many persons were given 
employment in its preparation. The order of 
mind that finds in this argument a justification 
for capitalists would doubtless hold that fires 
and cyclones perform a useful and beneficent 
service to society. These also destroy what 
they cannot consume. 

" Fleas," observes some philosopher, "give 
employment to a dog." But no one ever called 
them a benefit to the dog. Neither is capital a 
benefit to labor. It is not additional toil of 
which labor stands in need but a chance to 
gather to itself some of the fruits of its own in- 
dustry. 



THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS 161 

Under a sane instead of an insane economic 
system the more the workers produced the 
greater would be their rewards from their toil. 
Under a Co-operative or Socialist form of So- 
ciety increased efficiency on the part of a man 
or a machine would result in shorter hours of 
labor and greater benefits to all. Under the 
present Competitive, Private Ownership form 
of Society increased efficiency on the part of a 
man or a machine results merely in throwing 
greater numbers of his fellow workers out of a 
job and in piling up the Unconsumed Surplus 
for the fortunate few. 

It has been estimated that even in the pres- 
ent stage of invention all the work of the world 
necessary to supply mankind with all of its 
needs could be performed if each adult person 
worked four hours a day. The excess time that 
the great army of workers now toil is in order 
merely to pile up more interest and dividends 
for the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts and the 
Morgans. 

Meanwhile Business does not get Good and 
it will not get good. All the tariff tinkering, 
currency reform, trust busting and the entire 
program of regulative measures of the Demo- 
cratic Party, the Republican Party and the 
Progressive Party will not make business good. 



162 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

All the advertising campaigns and efficiency 
contests of the commercial experts will not make 
business good. Strive as we may to conceal this 
condition, to disguise it under the head of " a 
temporary depression," to lie about it in the 
columns of the kept press, business is bound to 
get worse and steadily worse. In the very na- 
ture of things it can not be otherwise so long as 
the present organization of Society endures. 

More and more factories will shut down, 
greater numbers of stores are bound to fail, 
railroads will lay off still more men, an ever 
increasing army will tramp the streets begging 
for what should be the natural heritage of 
work. While inside the shops and warehouses 
will be stored up the commodities that these 
men and their class have produced and for lack 
of which their families are suffering in destitu- 
tion and misery. 

There will be not one essential change in 
these conditions of wide spread wretchedness, 
Mr. Reformer; your business will never again 
be good, Mr. Merchant; until labor gains the 
purchasing power to buy back its own product. 

This will come about only when the wages 
and salaries paid to labor equal the full value of 
the product of labor. That will be when labor 
itself instead of capital owns the Nation's in- 



THE UNCONSUMED SURPLUS 163 

dustries. The first big step toward peace, se- 
renity and industrial freedom will be for the 
Nation to own the Trusts, and not to own them 
and operate them for the benefit of the idlers 
and the Parasites, but to own and operate them 
for the sole benefit of the workers. These alone 
produce wealth; these alone should have the 
wealth that they produce, and the control and 
direction of industry. Government ownership 
that stops short of democratic management will 
never reach the heart of existing evils. Con- 
trol by and for the producers is the one prac- 
tical solution. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE PATH TO PEACE 

So long as government remains in the hands 
of Big Business and its representatives and 
agents labor can expect to secure no real at- 
tention to its demands and not a particle of 
change in its condition. 

What will continue to happen to it may be 
seen from the following illustration: 

Under the perversion of the Sherman Anti- 
Trust law by which labor unions were, by a 
forced interpretation, regarded as " combina- 
tions in restraint of trade," great injustice was 
done to these organizations, which consequently 
demanded that the perversion of law against 
them should cease. 

For six years after the celebrated " Danbury 
Hatters Case," labor petitioned in vain for this 
simple act of justice. Sometimes Congress con- 
temptuously refused to hear it and sometimes 
it heard but would not heed. 

Under the threat of united action at the polls, 

labor finally succeeded in inducing the Demo- 

164 



THE PATH TO PEACE 165 

cratic party to pledge itself unequivocally in its 
national platform to amend the Sherman law 
so that labor unions should be exempted from 
the operation of the act. 

So long as the Democrats were out of power 
or had only the House of Representatives the 
situation remained unchanged. When the full 
control of government passed nominally to the 
Democrats, labor insisted that the pledges made 
in the party platform should be kept. 

Part of the Wilson program was to amend 
the Sherman act on other lines and when this 
came to be done, the promise was made by the 
Democratic leaders in the House that the ex- 
emption of labor should also be included. 

Labor looked forward expectantly to the ful- 
fillment of this promise. 

When the bill was finally prepared and re- 
ported for passage, the paragraph alleged to 
contain the exemption read as follows: 

That nothing contained in the Antitrust laws 
shall be construed to forbid the existence and op- 
eration of fraternal, labor, consumers, agricultural 
or horticultural organizations, orders or associa- 
tions instituted for the purposes of mutual help, 
and not having capital stock or conducted for 
profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members 
of such organizations, orders or associations from 
carrying out the legitimate objects thereof. 



166 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

Which was as clever a piece of legislative 
chicanery as was ever seen in Washington. 
For you will observe that in reality the clause 
exempted nothing. By a juggling of words it 
was made to appear to except these organiza- 
tions and really left them where they were. 

It was thus that the Democratic party ful- 
filled the pledges to labor that it had solemnly 
undertaken in its platforms and on the basis 
of which millions of workingmen had voted the 
Democratic ticket. 

The leaders of organized labor perceived the 
filthy trick that had been played upon them and 
demanded that the paragraph be amended to 
read as follows: 

That nothing contained in the Antitrust laws 
shall apply to fraternal, labor, consumers, agri- 
cultural or horticultural organizations, orders or 
associations instituted for the purposes of mutual 
help, and not having capital stock or conducted 
for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual mem- 
bers of such organizations, orders or associations 
Jfrom carrying out the legitimate objects thereof. 

At this a bit of stage play took place. Re- 
actionary members of Congress and a large 
part of the press denounced the proposed 
amendment as unfair, unjust, illegal and revo- 
lutionary, accusing labor of bad faith and dis- 



THE PATH TO PEACE 167 

honesty in demanding it. For the impression 
was adroitly conveyed that labor had agreed 
to the provision as it stood in the bill and was 
now reversing itself to secure some additional 
advantage never before contemplated. 

The Democratic leaders generally refused, 
on these grounds, or alleged grounds, to con- 
sider the amendment labor desired and the la- 
bor leaders refused to accept the bill as it stood. 
The controversy lasted several days and seemed 
to be beyond hope of settlement, when in an 
apparent spirit of compromise a final confer- 
ence was suggested and a visit to the White 
House. The result was that the bill was 
amended to read thus : 

Sec. 7. That nothing contained in the Antitrust 
laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and 
operation of fraternal, labor, consumers, agricul- 
tural, or horticultural organizations, orders, or as- 
sociations, instituted for the purposes of mutual 
help and not having capital stock or conducted for 
profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members 
of such organizations, orders, or associations from 
carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor 
shall such organizations, orders, or associations, or 
the members thereof, be held or construed to be 
illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of 
trade, under the Antitrust laws. 

Which again is a juggle of words, its mean- 
ing depending upon the interpretation that may 



168 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

be given to its obscure clauses. What, for in- 
stance, are "legitimate objects"? A court 
might and probably would hold that any strike 
was illegitimate. 

When this amendment reached the floor of 
the House, two or three members that perceived 
the large possibility it offered for " judicial 
interpretation " that would destroy all chance 
of relief from the present situation, tried to 
have the amendment as drawn by the labor lead- 
ers and quoted above, substituted for the vague 
declaration brought in by the committee. These 
men were howled down and the amendment as 
given here was adopted. 

What it means or will mean will depend upon 
the interpretation given to it by the courts, for 
as it stands it can be construed either way. 
Unless the courts have undergone a marvelous 
transformation there is little doubt as to how 
they will interpret it. Also there seems as lit- 
tle doubt in the mind of President Wilson as to 
what the thing means. The next day after it 
passed, at the semi-weekly meeting of the cor- 
respondents at the White House, the official 
representative of the President was asked 
plainly this question: 

" Does the amendment to the new anti-trust 



THE PATH TO PEACE 169 

law exempt labor unions from prosecution un- 
der the Sherman law as at present? " 

Quick as a flash the answer came back : 

" It most assuredly does not." 

The Japanese have a style of wrestling called 
jiu-jitsu, the principle of which is to cause your 
opponent to think he is throwing you, where- 
upon you make a sudden move and throw him. 

In the practice of this intricate art the Jap- 
anese are mere children compared with the 
adroit politicians that conduct Congress in be- 
half of the corporations and the Controlling 
Interests. 

These had determined that the situation in 
regard to labor and the Sherman act should not 
be essentially changed. It will be seen from 
the foregoing that they have had practically 
their way. They always do have their way 
and always will until the great working class, 
constituting the vast majority of the popula- 
tion, is fairly represented in government. 

Sometimes the question is asked what could 
be accomplished if the working class should 
unite and secure the share in the government 
that belongs to it. 

Here are some of the things that would then 
happen : 



170 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

It must be apparent that the heart of the 
trouble with this nation is the abnormal power 
secured by a few men through their possession 
of great wealth and great privileges. Every 
dollar in the great fortunes of these few persons 
is a unit of political power, exerted for their 
own benefit, and used to get more power to get 
more wealth and then more power. 

Working class government could abolish 
these privileges and with them this power that 
makes a republican form of government little 
better than a jest. With the abolition of the 
power of privilege would go the perversion of 
justice, the control of the courts in the interest 
of wealth, the domination of government in the 
same interest, the disfranchisement of millions 
of workingmen through unjust election and 
registry laws, designed to this end. 

But still beyond these great ends would be 
the change in the present methods of produc- 
tion and distribution so that the workers shall 
secure approximately the full value of the 
-wealth they create. 

That is to say, to put out of business for- 
ever the great pump that is now drawing into 
the hands of a few men all the resources of the 
country and producing the absolutely fatal con- 



THE PATH TO PEACE 171 

dition under which the cost of living steadily 
increases, but there is no corresponding increase 
in wages. 

To eliminate the Parasite and the idler, to 
abolish poverty and secure for the child of the 
least fortunate every advantage and oppor- 
tunity now enjoyed by the children of the rich; 
to substitute co-operation for the present in- 
sane system in which every man is sent forth 
armed against his brother; to put an end to 
unemployment, want, destitution, insufficiency 
in the midst of plenty, and all the horrors of 
capitalism — these are the things that must be 
done if civilization is not to revert to plain 
savagery. 

There is but one way to peace and justice 
and that is through the co-operative common- 
wealth. There is but one way to secure the co- 
operative commonwealth and that is through 
the united action of the workers, the sufferers 
under the existing conditions of accumulating 
wealth for the few and increasing poverty for 
the many. 

The first step toward this beneficent change 
is to substitute working class government for 
government by the Parasites and their repre- 
sentatives. 



172 DOING US GOOD AND PLENTY 

The time to begin that step is now. No one 
else will ever secure justice for the working 
class but only the working class itself. 



THE END 



